


Breath

by WenchicusThoticus



Series: Serious Fanfiction by Wenchicus Thoticus [2]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Aang briefly works for the cabbage merchant, Alternate Timeline, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Dark, Azula goes to therapy, Betrayal, Character Death, Character Study, Dubious Consent, Dubious Morality, Family, Fascism, Fire Nation Royal Family, Friendship, Gen, Genocide, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Incest, Infidelity, Isolationist Fire Nation, It gets dark, Loneliness, Make The Fire Nation Great Again, Mild Sexual Content, Moral Ambiguity, Non-Graphic Rape/Non-Con, Not A Fix-It, Ozai is a fashy bastard, Politics, Racism, Rape Aftermath, Trauma, Trust Issues, Violence, Young Ozai, Zhao fucked his way to the top, warnings are for non-graphic stuff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-07
Updated: 2020-07-11
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:00:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 4
Words: 37,514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24584965
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WenchicusThoticus/pseuds/WenchicusThoticus
Summary: When Aang awakens, 70 years have passed in the blink of an eye, and he has one choice: to rise up and do his duty to the world, or to keep running. With no one by his side and his trust shaken, he chooses the latter — until an ambitious Prince Ozai enlists his help to end the war and transform the Fire Nation. But a hatred festers within the prince, and Aang must choose again between himself and the world — before it’s too late.An AU where Aang awakens from the iceberg 30 years earlier.
Relationships: Aang & Iroh (Avatar), Aang & Ozai, Aang/Original Character, Aang/Ursa, Iroh & Ozai (Avatar), Ozai & Azulon, Ozai/Lu Ten, Ozai/Ursa (Avatar), Ozai/Zhao (Avatar)
Series: Serious Fanfiction by Wenchicus Thoticus [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1836850
Comments: 30
Kudos: 50





	1. Water

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally intended to be a one-shot, but it turned into something a bit longer because it’s hard to cover thirty years in just one chapter. (Hell, it could’ve been novel length, but I didn’t want to write all that.) 
> 
> Though I am a crack writer at heart, this is one of my rare serious fics. Aang and Ozai’s relationship in canon is very impersonal — they hadn’t even met until the final battle — so I wondered what could happen if they knew each other beforehand. I also wanted to explore Ozai’s motivations/ideology (which I think I kept close to canon, except for one obvious difference) and his early life, what it might look like if Aang lost his ideals and continued to run from responsibility, and a world where bending can actually kill people. Some other things are different as well, as you will see soon enough.

EPILOGUE

His hands fit around the prison bars as if they had been molded to them. Made for this. “Why did you spare me?” he growls. He cannot find the energy to summon anger — it has been replaced with a misery that threatens to well up from his gut and choke him from the inside. “This isn’t merciful. Death would have been merciful.”

The traces of a smile play across the avatar’s face. It’s a sad smile, one that’s fleeting. His eyes are so old, older than any part of him. It hadn’t always been this way, he knows. 

Have I always been this way? he asks himself. It’s a background thought, secondary to the feelings that overwhelm him upon Aang from behind prison bars for the first time.

“I’ve haven’t stayed true to what I believe in over the years,” Aang says. He sits cross-legged on the floor, so they are eye to eye. “And that was the problem. I should’ve seen the truth behind all of your promises.”

“And I should’ve seen the truth behind yours,” he snarls. 

The avatar’s gaze, slides over to his hand, where his knuckles are clenched white around the prison bar.

“In spite of everything.” He gulps, and Ozai notices the tears in his eyes. “In spite of everything, I know there’s something inside you worth saving. And if you can forgive me too, maybe, now that it’s all over… could we finally be friends?”

CHAPTER 1: Water

The ones who find Aang are some fishermen, near the south pole. “An airbender?” one of them says. “No one’s seen your kind for decades.”

It comes to him as a shock, a cruel prank. Seventy years gone in the blink of an eye. Everyone he knows must be dead or dying.

He takes advantage of the Water Tribe’s hospitality for a few weeks, watches them practice their waterbending by day, and by night, he sneaks off to replicate their forms. He sees little success, and it only discourages him further. He wasn’t the avatar that the world needed then, and he won’t be now, either.

The day the black snow falls is the day he leaves to find his people. It’s true, then, what they’ve been saying about Fire Nation. The world is at war, and there’s nothing he can do to help the Water Tribe as the soldiers lay waste to their village.

The Air Temple is empty and littered with bones. There is no one there to calm him as he flies into a burning rage.

He clings to the hope that the other temples still hold life, and heads north. People are puzzled at the sight of a young boy traveling alone, but he does not belong, so they treat him as an oddity and let him go on his way. Everyone tells him the same thing: there are no more airbenders. He cannot tell if it is his optimism or his fear that blinds him.

Everywhere he goes, the world has changed. Traces of the Fire Nation have crept into everyday life. The soldiers are the most obvious, they patrol villages, linger in public spaces, and demand goods and services from villagers. They aren’t everywhere he passes through; nonetheless, their presence is disturbingly common.

But it’s also in the way people talk to each other, the way they regard each other with suspicion, how the war squeezes its way into every conversation. He’s run out of one town when the residents suspect him of being a spy. Not even when he demonstrates his airbending can he convince them.

Fortunately, he finds his way into a pocket of resistance, and they are happy to have him. For the first time since he has been unexpectedly thrown forward in time, he finds companionship. It’s here that he truly realizes what a stranglehold the war has over every aspect of existence. These rebels are Earth Kingdom children who are too young to join the army, but they’re still doing everything they can to help the war effort. 

One day, after a battle, he and Mara — the leader of the group — are surveying the carnage. They’ve lost plenty of their own, but their most shocking find is a Fire Nation soldier lying in a pool of blood and gasping for air, a stone spire protruding from his stomach. It’s a gruesome sight, and Aang looks away.

“Can’t you bend the breath from people’s lungs?” she asks him.

“I’ve never tried,” he ventures, afraid of what she’s implying. “I don’t want to use my powers for something like that.”

“You’ll be doing him a favor,” she says.

He does it.

Over the coming weeks, he grows close enough to her to confess that he’s the avatar, but she betrays him and tells others. The news spreads, and he continues his flight from responsibility.

The Northern Temple is much the same as the first, dead and empty. In so many ways, he has been robbed of his life.

—

Ozai is not a child anymore. He will do anything to prove that, not to mention that life in the palace is boring. He craves independence and adventure. His brother had seen front lines by the time he was sixteen, so what’s two years of difference? 

Something about the way Azulon immediately folds to his demand makes him uneasy. Usually, when he asks his father for a favor, he is silenced and punished, but this time, he’s given a small force of newer recruits and asked to put down a rebellion near the colonies.

The world outside the Fire Nation is sweeping and vast — and alien. It’s his first time outside the country, and he’s puzzled by what usage these lands could serve, why wars are fought over them. The colonies aren’t terrible, but once he arrives in the ramshackle villages of the Earth Kingdom, he wonders how people can live like this, and why they resist the Fire Nation when they are here to make life so much better.

Their intel leads them straight to the rebel base. Now faced with real combat, Ozai doesn’t feel so confident anymore. He’s never gone up against earthbenders before — and he certainly hasn’t gone up against anyone who’s been trying to kill him. He plans an ambush, but they realize they’re being watched and attack him first. His forces are pummeled and crushed into retreat, and in the midst of the boulders whizzing past and crashing down all around him, he thinks he knows why his father let him have this mission.

It’s a humiliating defeat at the hands of a group of peasant children, but one of his soldiers manages to capture an enemy. She’s a kid, just like him, and despite the discipline she and her compatriots showed on the field, all Ozai has to get her talking is make some threats he’s not sure he could carry out anyway. She reveals the location of their other base, their future plans, what they know about their enemies, and most intriguingly, that the avatar had been among their ranks until very recently. He’d left to visit the northern air temple.

Ozai cannot let anyone else have this knowledge. If he can’t stop the rebels, then maybe he can kill the avatar, and this will bring him glory.

It will be a quick day trip. His men are already driving him up the wall — disrespectful, condescending, bitter — and he needs some time away from their constantly bickering. He doesn’t tell anyone where he’s going.

—

Aang only gets a few days of peace. A sorrowful peace, but peace nonetheless. He spends his time in the temple, meditating and enjoying the solitude. Images flash behind his eyelids of his companions burning alive, of the light leaving the soldier’s eyes. Cracks have appeared in the statues, vines creep up the walls, the bathing pools are filled with algae. Nature is reclaiming the temple. Has it really been so long since this place was filled with life? And how long until the war claims the rest of the world as well?

And where can he go from here?

The scrabbling sound of rocks falling away make him open his eyes. He assumes it’s Appa, whose company he has been so grateful for throughout all of this. But the bison is sleeping in the courtyard, on the other side of the wall. Instead, a human figure emerges from over the side of the cliff, and his heart leaps —

But it’s not an airbender. The boy, wearing a tattered Fire Nation military uniform, lays there panting once he’s pulled himself up onto the floor of the temple. Aang stays stock still, anticipating that more soldiers will follow him up at any moment.

The boy glances up, then does a double take. Aang is off with the speed of the wind, and hides himself deep within the temple. He hears the boy’s footsteps as he explores around, and returns to meditating. Maybe if he waits long enough, he’ll give up.

His tentative voice echoes in the empty halls. “You can come out. I just want to talk.”

It’s tempting — especially since he’s had no human contact in days — but he stays put. It’s a ruse, a trap that he won’t let himself fall into.

The boy finds Appa, and Aang peers around the corner, then sneaks out. The boy is in awe of the huge beast, and approaches him cautiously, one hand extended.

“Don’t worry. He’s friendly,” Aang finds himself saying.

The boy turns abruptly, but the tension in his posture and his startled expression don’t melt away when he sees that Aang is just another kid. “So you’re that avatar I’ve been hearing about,” he ventures.

“Who are you?” Aang returns stonily.

“Oh, I’m new,” he says nervously. “My name is Li. They sent me to go get you. I know how it seems. I’m Fire Nation, originally, but I deserted the army.” He gestures to his clothing, his face. Aang doesn’t comment on how young the boy looks.

“I don’t want to go back. They betrayed my trust. They even told you,” he says. “I’ve never met you, and you know who I am.”

“I’m sorry,” the boy says. He shifts from foot, thinking of something to say. But there is nothing to say. He is not welcome here, and he should leave. “Look, it took me longer than I thought to get up here, and I won’t be able to make it back before dark.”

“Then stay on the other side of the temple,” he says. “When you get back, tell Mara and the others that I don’t want anything to do with them.” 

He starts to leave, but the boy stops him. “Wait!” Aang looks over his shoulder expectantly while he struggles for words. “I bet I’m the first firebender you’ve met who isn’t trying to hurt you. I can show you a few things.”

Again, it’s tempting — and he considers it. He isn’t interested in learning all the elements, but it would be useful to know his enemy. 

“All right,” he agrees. “Show me what you can do.”

—

Aang is a remarkably good student. It takes him several tries to generate flame, but once he does, he catches on to the rest pretty quick.

It scares Ozai. Here he is, revealing to potentially his greatest enemy the secrets of his people. An enemy that doesn’t seem particularly intent on using his power to win the war, but an enemy nonetheless. What he could become after he’s fully trained is terrifying. Every once in a while, when Aang’s back is turned, he pictures himself lighting the avatar on fire, but the opportunity always passes.

By the end of the night, tensions have lowered enough to the point where they’re acting friendly, making jokes. They sit around a fire pit in the courtyard, cooking food. Aang has gathered some berries and plants that he calls a meal, and Ozai offers him some bread and meat from his pack. He feels bad, and at least wants his last meal to be something good. 

“No thanks,” he says, and explains that he’s a vegetarian, but accepts a roll of bread. “It’s still better than the stew Mara makes. Ick!” 

Ozai laughs along, even though he has no clue what the avatar is talking about. “Hey, I’ve been showing you firebending all day, why don’t you show me your airbending?” he asks. It’s out of nowhere — and it’s out of genuine curiosity.

The avatar jumps up and abandons his food, delighted by the question. He forms a ball of air, sits on it, and goes zooming around the courtyard. “This one’s called an air scooter,” he explains as he flies around. Ozai’s never seen anything like it before. “I invented it myself! Wheee!” The ball dissipates, and he plops himself down by the fire again and continues eating. “What else do you want to see?”

“I don’t know. What is there?”

Aang spends the next ten minutes demonstrating various techniques. Sure, Ozai, too, wants to know his enemy, but there’s something about seeing a lost art up close like this. He wonders if he really wants to destroy the last airbender, really wants to let this all fall into oblivion. And unlike the dilapidated, impoverished Earth Kingdom villages, the temple ruins are gorgeous. This had once been a great civilization.

But his own is better. Aang is a novelty and a curiosity, and if he really is the last of his people, then airbending will die out anyway. It’s not worth it to let this threat live. In spite of this inkling of doubt, seeing the avatar’s proficiency at not only airbending but the way he picked up firebending so quickly reassures him that winning his trust and then betraying him was the correct course of action.

The avatar falls asleep next to him, suspecting nothing, but Ozai stays awake, willing himself to make a move. It would be so easy to burn him alive; he would be consumed by flames before he had the chance to counterattack.

No, that is a far more painful death than he deserves. A lightning bolt straight to the heart, then? He hasn’t quite gotten the technique down, and it would be risky. 

He can’t do it. It would be dishonorable to attack an opponent while they slept. This is what he tells himself to block out the overwhelming voices in his head mocking him for being too weak to kill.

“I want to spar with you before I go,” Ozai says in the morning. His men will be wondering where he is, and he has to get back soon — with something to show for his absence. “I’ve never fought an airbender before.”

“Okay!” the avatar chirps merrily, and he takes off laughing. “I hope you’re ready!”

Aang is a master of evasion, and Ozai chases him across the temple. He dodges all of his attacks with hardly any counterstrikes of his own. They find themselves in close quarters in the bathhouse, and now in addition to the blasts of wind he’s been fighting, Aang swamps him with a wave of dirty water.

“Hey! That’s cheating!” This pushes his mounting frustration over the edge into full-blown anger. He fires a lightning bolt at the avatar, and the wall behind him explodes. While Aang is trying to figure out what happened, Ozai pounces on him, and they go tumbling roughly and sliding across the floor.

“Okay, you got me!” Aang concedes. “That was fun, we should—”

Ozai sends a wave of flame at him, and he rolls out of the way just in time. Some of the fire blows back and him, and he lets loose a low, guttural growl as it singes his eyelashes and burns his skin. 

“Li! Stop it! It’s just a game! I’m sorry!”

Aang is already outside, and without hesitation, Ozai shoots another lightning bolt in the direction of his voice. Is he too thick in the skull to understand what’s really happening?

The winds whips up, rocks are caught in the whirl, water flies out of the pool. He catches sight of the avatar again, and he’s levitating, his eyes glowing.

Ozai decides that it is time to run. He makes it to the edge of the temple and scampers down the cliff, foliage and stone tearing at his hands and clothing, dirt caking his palms. He slips and tumbles and miraculously ends up at the bottom without any broken bones.

He spends the rest of the walk back to camp listening to his stomach rumble, trying not to get lost, and thinking of a lie to tell his men.

—

It’s not safe at the temple anymore. He doesn’t know who Li is, or what he wanted, or if he was even from the resistance to begin with — but it doesn’t matter. He can’t stay. Aang leaves for the north pole, where he can learn waterbending in safety. His secret is out, so he might as well step up to the task.

The Northern Water Tribe welcomes him, but there’s some animosity. “I was frozen in an iceberg for seventy years” isn’t a well-received response to the question of why he disappeared at the start of the war. Their masters train him, and after a year, he has it down pretty well. Despite lingering issues due to his past friends, he befriends some of his fellow students. They already know he’s the avatar, and he grows to enjoy the positive attention. They’re not firebenders. They’re won’t betray him.

But they aren’t there for him when the masters arrange for him to go to the Earth Kingdom for the next stage of his training. It’s too dangerous, their parents won’t let them, what are they going to do while he learns earthbending anyway? They promise they’ll visit and keep in touch, but it’s a major disappointment. He’s finally found some people he can connect with, only to be ripped away from them. And he’s not looking forward to learning earthbending, either. When he was with the rebellion, he would sneak off at night to practice, just like he did in the Southern Water Tribe — but he could never move a single pebble.

He’s relieved, at least, when Master Kona joins him so he can continue to practice waterbending. With the other students, Kona had been his favorite teacher, but one on one, their sessions quickly turn dark. Kona pushes him to his limits, grows angry when doesn’t learn fast enough. He uses their closeness as an excuse to touch him, and all the while, they travel the Earth Kingdom in search of a teacher. Each time Aang finds someone he likes, Kona steers him away, and they resume their search. One night, he wakes up to Kona reaching beneath the waistband of his pants, fondling him. Aang pretends to be asleep, but he can’t keep up the ruse for long. They never talk about it.

He puts up with it for far longer than he should. Kona’s moments of kindness give him the hope he needs to stick through it, and his friends won’t be able to visit him if he runs away. He’s finally begun to step up to his duty, but the path leading him astray calls to him louder and louder with every time he nurses his wounds after training, with every potential teacher they turn down, with every time Kona visits him at night.

Finally, he’s had enough. One night when it’s especially bad and Kona is especially rough, Mara’s voice echoes. 

Can’t you bend the breath from people’s lungs?

The next day, he’s headed back for the resistance. He starts growing out his hair, covering his tattoos, and wearing Earth Kingdom clothing. Appa is a dead giveaway, so he flies over wilderness when he can, and makes sure the bison is hidden whenever they land. He’s grateful for him, at least, and not just for his transportation. If there’s anyone who will never betray him, it’s Appa.

When he arrives, the old rebel base has been scorched over. He checks their other bases, and finds that one has been replaced with a Fire Nation encampment. Of course. If he could raze this place himself, he just might do it. He vows to keep searching for them, even though he knows that they won’t be found unless they want to. Or maybe — he barely lets himself think it — it’s because they’re all dead.

That thought percolating, then bubbling up and writhing and begging to be released — that’s what sends him over the edge. His vision whites out, and he loses control.

—

It’s been a long fight, but they’ve finally done it. After six months, they’ve wiped out the rebel base, and Ozai goes home to a father who is pleased with him. Not quite proud, but he’ll take it. 

Of course, his older brother’s accomplishments overshadow his own. Iroh is out on the front lines, winning important victories, while all Ozai has managed to do is wipe out a few bothersome kids. 

His mother is impressed, though, and he is thrilled to have made it back in time to bring her some happiness while she’s on her deathbed. She’s one of the only people he can say that he loves, but there’s something about her affection that feels fake. She never tells him the truth, only says what she thinks he wants to hear. When his father gives him attention, he knows it’s genuine because he has earned it. He has earned it with battle scars and nightmares and a phobia of avalanches crashing down cliff sides to bury him alive while he sleeps, but he has earned it nonetheless. And it will be worth it.

She succumbs to the disease the day after he returns to the battlefield. He’s succeeded in destroying their rebel encampment, but a handful of survivors have regrouped, recruited new members, and continued to wage guerrilla warfare. He uses one of their old bases for his soldiers — one that is far away from any cliffs or mountains — and the fight continues. The rebels disrupt supply lines and steal food, launch surprise attacks from above and below. Ozai’s fear of avalanches expands to encompass the earth opening up and swallowing him whole. For days on end, his whole force goes hungry. His men, who had just started to respect him after their initial victory, hate him again.

He is miserable. One day — one day soon — he will be fire lord, and he won’t have to do any of this. He will send out soldiers to do his bidding, and he will sit on his throne, and all of his subordinates will love him. That’s the future he’s fighting for.

It drags on for far too long with too little progress, an unchanging stretch of torment in which the days all blend together — until the avatar returns. He destroys their camp, wreaking destruction in a blind rage. He’s glowing and hovering just like the last time he saw him, and Ozai commands his men to evacuate, not that they need someone to tell them that. They don’t stand half a chance.

Ozai hides in the bushes, watching from a distance and waiting it out. He’s not the inexperienced kid he was twelve, eighteen months ago. He’s killed before, and he’ll do it again. This time, he’ll finish the avatar, but he can’t risk engaging him while he’s in this state.

The harsh wind dies down, the light fades from his eyes. He falls to the ground in a heap, and Ozai approaches cautiously. Aang drags himself into a sitting position, and the voices scream, do it, kill him now.

The avatar notices him just as he looses a bolt of lightning, and rolls out of the way. He scurries to his feet, and Ozai gives chase. Aang trips over a pile of debris and skids through the mud. He stays down.

Ozai’s soldiers move in. They’ve got him.

—

When Aang awakens, his vision is blurry, his body hurts, and he doesn’t know where he is. Something digs into his wrists and ankles, and he panics, struggling against his bonds and flopping uselessly onto the floor. 

Someone else is in the tent with him. He stops fighting for a moment, and his vision clears. It takes him a moment to remember where he knows him from. “Li?” he croaks. “They got you too?”

Li doesn’t reply. He takes a sip of tea, makes a face, then tosses the rest of the drink. “I might not have recognized you if it wasn’t for the glowing spirit eyes that happened back there,” he says. 

He still doesn’t understand. His fear and his optimism blind him again, and he believes what he wants to believe. “What’s going on? You’re not tied up. Could you let me go? I’ll get us both out of here, you can come with me—”

Li crosses his legs. Half of the back of his chair is missing, splintered off. “I’m not a prisoner here. I’m in charge of this camp. What are you doing back here? I thought you wanted nothing to do with the resistance.”

Aang denies him an answer. “Who are you?”

“Tell me, avatar, who are you fighting for?” Li asks. His clothes are dirty and ripped, a bloody gash runs across his cheek, and his skin is smeared with mud, dotted in bruises — but he exudes a sly smugness.

“Who are you? Let me go!” he cries out. “Ashmaker!”

“You have no one to fight for. Your people — all dead. It’s a shame. I did enjoy our day at the temple that time. I heard the news that you ran from the Water Tribe. They found your master dead in his bed mere weeks ago. Come now, you must hate me, but even I didn’t stoop so low as to kill you in your sleep. And now you’re back in the Earth Kingdom. These rebels betrayed you — the last time I saw you, you wanted nothing to do with them. So tell me. Why, then, do you fight?”

“For peace,” Aang forces out. He didn’t kill Kona in his sleep, it was in self defense—!

“Peace. You fight for peace,” Li mocks. “I don’t want to kill you, avatar. I’ve realized that now. That would help neither of us. So I’ll give you a choice — and some advice. Don’t fight for peace from the losing side. If you want this war to end quickly, then fight for the Fire Nation. With someone of your strength and potential with us, this could be over in months! What do you say, avatar?”

“You’re insane. You wiped out my whole people, and you expect me to help you!” he spits.

Li leans back in his broken chair. “You’re the one who said you fight for peace. I’m only offering a solution.”

“I’d rather die, you lying, cheating—” Li poses to strike with lightning again, and Aang taunts, “Go ahead and do it! What’s another corpse at the hands of an ashmaker?”

Aang’s hands are free enough for him to bend the discarded tea out of the dirt and slice through the bindings around his legs. Dodging the fireballs that roar through the tent, he makes off to find Appa. 

Li screams, curses, and pursues, but it’s a long time until they see each other again.


	2. Earth

CHAPTER 2: Earth

Ozai should’ve figured the avatar would be so slippery. He should’ve known from last time. How stupid was he to invite him to join their side? Not only because he’d already known that Aang’s answer would be a hard no, but because if someone with that much power was ever brought anywhere near the palace, he could bring the whole dynasty toppling down.

Though Ozai wouldn’t exactly mind if Aang killed his older brother.

Another Fire Nation battalion passes through his camp one day on their way to the front, and they merge forces. The larger, more experienced army helps them destroy the rest of the rebels in exchange for aid on the battlefield. He’s never fought against real Earth Kingdom soldiers before, and their attacks are far more powerful and coordinated — but predictable. Together, they force the earth army inland until the handful of survivors surrender. The Fire Nation soldiers celebrate with rape and pillage. Ozai does not participate. There is no honor in the killing of a defenseless opponent.

Finally, he comes home again. The rest of his family is back together for the first time since his mother’s death. Ozai’s victories in the field are overshadowed by Iroh’s wedding to a noblewoman, and as much as he wants to drink himself stupid, he spends the reception sitting in the corner, alone, regretting the way the avatar slipped from his grasp. Maybe, had he succeeded, he would be the one with all the attention, all the glory. Iroh would be a terrible leader, one who doesn’t have his country’s best interests in mind.

Neither of them return to the battlefield for a long while. Soon, Iroh has a son, and he spends most of his time caring for the child instead of leaving it to his wife or the servants. Ozai becomes engrossed in his studies of military strategy and advanced firebending techniques. Occasionally, Iroh joins him for practice, and his comments reek of the sort of praise his mother would’ve given him. Dishonest. Sugarcoated. 

Several years later, his studies are finished, and it’s time to test his skills in the field. His father sees that he’s capable and gives him a real mission. He and Iroh will lead a two-pronged attack against a major Earth Kingdom base that lies between the Si Wong desert and Ba Sing Se. Iroh’s forces will simply sail to the stronghold. Ozai’s forces will travel through enemy territory and across the desert.

Sounds fair.

The trek is just as grueling as he imagined, and they lose many men to dehydration, heat stroke, disease, and infighting before they even arrive. The attack itself is long and drawn out, just like everything else about the war. The weeks they expected to spend on the front slip by into months. The Earth Kingdom sends wave after wave of reinforcements, while Ozai and Iroh cannot do the same. 

Ozai is the one who comes up with the idea that will end the operation, and Iroh, admittedly the more diplomatic of the two, ventures back into the desert to do the dirty work. The sandbenders aren’t loyal to the Earth Kingdom, and he’s able to bribe them into joining forces with the Fire Nation. With their home field advantage and dutiful cooperation, together, they’re able to destroy the base and send their enemies scattering.

They’re welcomed home warmly. Iroh still gets most of the praise, but he defers the credit onto Ozai. Over their time on the front together, his animosity towards his brother has weakened, replaced with a begrudging respect. He even gets to know his nephew, who has grown so much that Ozai doesn’t even recognize him. The boy is spoiled and undisciplined, but perhaps that will change once he goes off to the academy. 

He realizes that this boy is in line to be the future fire lord — not him. Something must be done about that.

—

Aang’s journey takes him all around the Earth Kingdom and into Ba Sing Se, where he can disappear. It is the one place he’s been that seems untouched by the war; he doesn’t even hear anyone speak of it. The illusion of peace lets him forget the outside world, and he blends seamlessly into the faceless masses of peasants and refugees in the lower ring.

He spends his first weeks sleeping in alleyways, until he finds a job selling produce at an outdoor market. The owner is kind and lets him take food from the stand for free (though he quickly tires of just eating cabbage), and soon, he saves up enough to rent an apartment.

Once his basic needs are covered and he’s settled in, he sets off to learn earthbending. At the first academy he tours, the owners regard him with skepticism. “You’re what, fifteen, sixteen, and you’ve never moved earth before? Are you sure you’re a bender?”

“I, um, did once, but I must’ve forgotten how,” he offers lamely, and shrugs.

He’s by far the oldest student, but after what happened with Kona, he’ll take classes any day over one on one training. He quickly outgrows the academy and brings his practice to the sparsely populated outskirts of the city, where he also spends time with Appa. 

Life stabilizes. Sometimes, alone in his apartment, he wonders what’s going on beyond the city walls. He remembers of his duty to the world, and scoffs at it. The world had a duty to him, too, and it failed. 

Loneliness is his greatest enemy over the passing years, and it festers inside him like a wound that never heals. He cannot tell anyone who he is, and this makes it unbearably worse. Nonetheless, he manages to connect with some people. Customers, other workers at the market, neighbors in the flats next to him. He befriends a group of boys a bit older than him, but they always go out drinking. He knows what alcohol might do to his mind, and he doesn’t want any information slipping, so he always declines them. Pretty soon, they lose interest in him and move on.

He hits it off pretty well with the girl who moves in upstairs. She’s pretty, kind, and about his age, and he always sees her with her little brother around the building. He gets up the courage to ask her on a date, and she accepts. Their relationship moves along slowly but surely, but thankfully, she never pushes him into sex. About a year in, she confesses that she thinks she might be a lesbian, and in turn, he considers revealing his true identity. 

Considers.

They promise to remain friends, but he sees her around less and less, until eventually, her family moves out of the building without telling him. Sometimes, he sees her at the market, and they give each other a passing wave. He doesn’t even care that they don’t date anymore. All he wants is a friend.

Worse yet, Appa is sick, his health declining with each visit. He doesn’t know what to do, and there’s no one to go to for help. He leaves for the air temples in hopes that there’s some surviving literature on the physiology or medical treatment of sky bison. What he finds doesn’t look good. His healing abilities with waterbending are enough to temporarily relieve pain, but not enough fight off the disease. 

He travels to the Southern Water Tribe in hopes that there are better healers there, thinking that he’ll demand their services and then disappear back into the Earth Kingdom. But things are vastly different from the way they were even ten years ago, when he woke up from the iceberg. There are only a handful of benders left, and they cannot help him. The Fire Nation attacks have only worsened over the past decade, and they urge him to leave.

The north is out of the question. Appa is too weak to fly there. Even if he wanted to go back, he couldn’t. He wouldn’t be allowed. They would never help him after he killed Kona, they would never believe him when he told them what he’d been through at the hands of his master.

They get to the Earth Kingdom mainland before Appa becomes to sick to go on.

Can’t you bend the breath from people’s lungs? Mara says, and for the first time, Aang is completely, utterly alone.

—

Ozai’s father calls him to the throne room one day. “I see you’ve been spending time with your nephew lately. You are old enough now to start a family of your own, you know.”

He’s more excited than he’d expected. The sexual aspect of it appeals to him the most, at first. He won’t have sneak around with servant girls at home, or commit shameful, desperate acts with the other soldiers overseas. (When he is in charge, he will let women into the military for no other reason if not to satisfy the male soldiers.) A wife will complete all these duties for him.

Then he realizes. He will need an heir — a strong, disciplined one — if he’s to gain favor as the true successor to the throne. Maybe his father knows this, and wants to give him the chance to prove himself on equal footing with Iroh for once.

His new wife is pretty and docile, and that is all that matters to him. But he does, in time, grow to care for her, even when it comes to light that their views on parenting conflict. Their roles fall into place in a way that Ozai can be happy with anyway. A mother that offers unconditional support, and a powerful father whose love his children must earn. This is how he was raised, and he’s turned out just fine. One thing is certain, though. He will give his second-born fair treatment, the way his own father never did.

In the early years of his new family, Azulon sends him to deal with only domestic issues, so he’s never gone for more than a few months at a time. He sees sides of the Fire Nation that he never believed existed — poverty, pollution, sickness, despair. They remind him of the Earth Kingdom villages of his first military assignment, the broken people and decrepit buildings. He had always believed that the Fire Nation was trying to help the other countries, but the Water Tribes and Earth Kingdom were just too backwards and ignorant to understand this. In the midst of war, where all he could think about was how to eliminate his enemies without dying, it was easy to lose sight of the bigger picture. 

But when there are firebenders and their families suffering at home, how can they prioritize other nations like this? He helps to put down strikes, labor disputes, protests. He sees families without fathers, whole generations of children who have grown up without the stern but loving discipline that will turn them into strong, functioning adults. He sees the natural beauty of his great nation marred by the industrial war machine. He sees a people dissatisfied with its leadership.

Soon, he is needed back on the front lines. His father was satisfied with his and Iroh’s teamwork on their last joint operation, and he has a new mission for them. Ozai has always been fighting for one thing: the chance to displace his brother as the crown prince, and now, with more reasons than ever to back him up, this might be his chance.

—

Aang spends months wandering back to Ba Sing Se, only to find that he’s been evicted from his apartment and fired from his job. He’s forced to start all over again, only this time, he doesn’t have the motivation. Giving up sounds so easy, just letting himself slide away. His journey outside the city has only reminded him that the war rages on, and if he can’t save Appa, then how can he possibly save the world?

He is barely alive, shambling through rank alleyways and digging in the dumpsters for anything remotely edible when he smells noodles cooking. His impulses have been telling him to steal food right out of people’s hands, and they’re getting harder to ignore. He lurches into the shop, and people turn their eyes away, pretending not to see him. A girl in an apron approaches him warily. “I’ll work for food,” slips out of his mouth.

Somehow, they accept his offer — the kindness of strangers is a fickle thing. They give him a bowl of soup, but he’s in no position to care, much less to complain that it has meat in it. They set him to work sweeping the floor and taking out the garbage, and invite him to come back the next day.

Soon, he’s back where he was. One of his coworkers offers up a spare bed in his apartment, but Aang needs to live alone, even if it means spending another week on the street. He moves into a basement apartment shortly, and relishes in peeling off the filthy bindings around his arms and untangling the headband from his matted hair. Finally, his tattoos exposed to open air for the first time in months, he washes himself clean of the stink of the street.

He becomes friends with some of his coworkers, and hopes that they won’t disappoint him the same way everyone else has. The girl from the shop, especially, takes an interest in him. When he figures out that Cai is trying to court him, he starts to distance himself, but she’s assertive and blunt. She hunts him down, corners him, and he agrees to give her a chance.

He likes her spontaneity, her sense of adventure, but she pushes him too far, too fast. One night, she takes him to a pond to go swimming in the moonlight. “Why do you always wear those bandages around you arms? Do you take them off to wash them?” she asks.

“When I was little, the Fire Nation invaded my village, and I was burned,” he lies, thinking it’ll stop her from asking anything else. “My skin’s all scarred over.”

She regards him warily, and her fingers close around the collar of his shirt. She leans in close and whispers in his ear. “We’re not supposed to talk about that here. I know we’re near the edge of the city, but that doesn’t mean we’re safe. My family learned that the hard way.”

He tries to clarify, but she won’t let him talk. He’s killed the mood, and they skip a few stones across the pond before he walks her home. She tries to invite him upstairs, and innocently, he accepts, only to get confused when she starts taking off her clothes.

“I don’t care that you have burns on your arms, Wan,” she whines. “I want you.” 

He denies her, and she says, “Then keep them on. Just touch me.”

Her body is much different than Kona’s — smaller and softer, feminine. He’s tentative, just sitting there and stroking her hair and trying not to look below her waist. She grows tired of it and sucks on his fingers. Her hands are forceful when they guide his touch down her neck and to her chest, push his head down to her breasts.

“No. We’re not doing this,” he says, and he gets up and leaves.

“Wan! Wait!” she cries out, but he doesn’t listen.

She apologizes to him at the shop the next day. He’d spent the night lying awake, worrying that he’d ruined their relationship — and thinking about what she’d said about the Fire Nation. Something is amiss here, and maybe the city isn’t as safe as he’s believed.

He brings her aside into the storage room when business is slow. “You’re good at keeping secrets, right?” he asks.

Cai nods hesitantly, taken aback by his seriousness. “I have to be. What is this about, Wan? Is this about…?”

“It’s about something you said yesterday,” he whispers. “If you tell me why we’re not allowed to talk about the war, then I’ll show you what’s on my arms. You can’t tell anyone.”

She bites her lip. Her gaze searches his face nervously. “It’s tempting,” she admits. “I don’t know…”

“I’ll see you tomorrow night. Make up your mind by then.”

She shows up at his building the next day, and Aang takes her to the forested grove where he used to visit Appa. He figures that if no one noticed a flying bison living in the woods for six years, or the young man who would come here to practice all styles of bending, then it’s a safe place to talk about secrets.

“I noticed that no one here ever mentions the war,” he says, pushing his way deeper into the thicket, and into the cave where Appa had always slept. It hurts him to come here; the hollow still smells like him. “But I just thought that was because it was safe here.”

“The king doesn’t want us to talk about it,” Cai admits quietly, likely still afraid that they’re in danger. “He doesn’t want us to panic. If the secret police hear you bring it up, they’ll kidnap you, and you’ll come back brainwashed. It happened to my sister. She’s normal most of the time, but it’s like they have a leash around her mind.” 

He scowls. Even if he can escape the Fire Nation, he can’t escape tyranny. “I’ve been all over the Earth Kingdom, and to the Water Tribes. It’s taken over their lives. It’s all anyone can think about.”

“How long have you lived here? And you never knew about this?” she asks incredulously.

“I guess I just haven’t talked to many people. I have good reason to mind my own business.” He shrugs off his jacket, and pulls loose the binding around his hands, letting the fabric unravel. Cai stares intently, then he undoes his headband, pulls back his hair to reveal his forehead.

“What is that?” she breathes. He lets her run her hand down the tattoo on his arm, follow it past his shoulder, but he grabs her wrist once she reaches under his shirt to trace it down his back. Kona’s wet, meaty fingers trail down his spine, and they keep going—

He forcibly banishes the memory, but his skin still tingles. “These are airbender tattoos,” he explains.

“What? No way! You’re an airbender? Wait! No! You must be the avatar! Prove it,” she gasps, so reluctantly, he does a quick demonstration for her.

“You can’t tell anyone about this,” he warns. “I’m trusting you with my biggest secret.”

“Why aren’t you out there on the front lines? Fighting against the Fire Nation? Wait!” She lowers her voice. “Is it true that you killed your waterbending teacher? Why did you do it?”

The breath being sucked from Kona’s lungs, his eyes bulging, hands grasping at the invisible grip around his neck—

“It was an accident,” Aang says simply. “I only meant to knock him unconscious.” Whenever he regrets the unintended consequence of fighting back, he thinks about how Kona will never hurt a child again.

“I thought airbenders were supposed to be peaceful,” she breathes. “What did he do?”

He ignores the question. “I am peaceful,” he insists. “I’m not participating in the war anymore. Whenever I tried to help, my allies just stabbed me in the back. It’s not worth it anymore. I know how it’ll end for me.” 

He gazes at her impassively, and she stares back, fear in her eyes. “Don’t stab me in the back, too, Cai.”

—

Once they’re alone, Ozai’s deputy slaps his ass. “I like how you look in these pants,” he purrs.

“But you’d like me better without them on.” He shoves Zhao’s hand away. “I told you, we’re not doing this anymore,” he hisses.

“Then at least tell me there’ll be hookers in the city,” Zhao says, crossing his arms and glowering.

“I’m sure there will be,” Ozai reassures him absentmindedly. He can’t see his new outfit very well in the reflection of the river, but it feels inordinately strange to pass himself off as some sort of commoner. He still feels royal, as if he won’t blend into the crowds thanks to the way he exudes superiority.

“You look fine. Come on. Let’s get this over with.”

“I couldn’t agree more.”

They ride from the bay and join the stream of refugees waiting to get into the city. He and Zhao can barely move through the crowded, reeking encampments to show the worker at the kiosk their faked documents. A beggar seems to sense their wealth and pesters them for spare change. Ozai obliges and gives him a few coins just so he’ll leave them alone.

“I think we need to find another way in,” Zhao says once they’re in the relative privacy of their tent. “This will take too long! By the time we’re inside the city, Prince Iroh will have already broken through the wall.”

Ozai is a prince. He shouldn’t have to live like this. Conditions on the front lines were far from ideal, but at least Fire Nation soldiers knew the meaning of personal space — and could wash themselves. “And I think that you have better things to do with your mouth than telling me what I already know,” he says. Things aren’t going as well as hoped, and he needs to blow off some steam.

“Didn’t you just say we weren’t doing this anymore?”

Zhao has the intellect of a brick, but his skills at oral sex are unmatched. Ozai’s wife doesn’t even come close, and she’s never been half as eager as Zhao. “I say that every time, and I always take it back,” he scoffs. “And I thought I told you to stop using Iroh’s title. He doesn’t deserve it.”

Zhao gets on all fours and rubs Ozai’s crotch through his pants. “It’s a reminder that a prince is all he’ll ever be. But you… you are my fire lord.”

Ozai pats him on the head like a dog, and sits back to let him work his magic.

In the middle of the night, he has an idea, and gets to work finding an earthbender who will tunnel under the wall for them. The idea of going underground where the earth could swallow him whole scares him far more than he’d like to admit, revives old fears from his days fighting against the rebellion, but it’s the best way. Guards patrol the camp, making sure no one starts any trouble, but it’s easy enough to sneak off and then make a break for the wall. He asks a family with young children, figuring they’re desperate to get inside, and he obtains their help with only a small payment. He can only hope that the rest of his army was smart enough to get in.

Ba Sing Se is new yet familiar to him. It’s not unlike Caldera, but he can see everything. The poverty, the homelessness, the heaps of flesh and cloth that he would generously call people sleeping in the gutters. But in the rest of the Fire Nation, is it really better? 

He and Zhao are still exploring when morning comes, and the markets open, the odors of foreign food overpowering that of human waste.

“What’s that smell?” Zhao asks, practically salivating. “I’m starved.”

Ozai’s stomach growls. They’ve been up since midnight without a meal, and they’re not like the other poor peasants here in the lower ring. They can afford it. “Then let’s eat.”

The noodle shop is crowded even this early in the morning, probably because people can smell it from a block away. Zhao immediately begins to hit on their server, disappointed by the lack of prostitutes that had approached them during the night.

The girl grows visibly uncomfortable when Zhao asks if she’ll serve him some “melons,” even though it’s not on the menu. “Stop it,” Ozai scolds him.

She leaves. “Why, are you jealous?” he asks, running a hand along his inner thigh under the table. “Don’t worry, I’ll take care of you once we find a place to stay.”

“No. Don’t make a scene.” A new server replaces the girl, and Ozai doesn’t pay much attention to him at first, but there’s something familiar about him. He figures maybe it’s one of the soldiers who’d gotten here before him and Zhao, though it’s strange that he would’ve gotten a job. He’ll have to ask him about finding somewhere to sleep. And where to find prostitutes in this city.

The meal is surprisingly good, but he catches the server shooting them odd looks, his gaze lingering longer than it should. Upon Zhao’s urging, he decides to confront him, and they follow him into the alleyway when he goes to take out the trash.

The server doesn’t notice them at first, but Ozai reaches out and puts a firm hand on his shoulder. He doesn’t react well, flinching from the touch and dropping the bag of trash at his feet.

Ozai draws away with a grimace. “Sorry,” he laughs awkwardly. “It’s us. Your commanders. We’ve been up all night trying to get in—”

“I think you’re mistaking me for someone else,” he cuts in. His whole body is frozen.

“Never mind. We’ll be on our way, then,” he says, and starts to guide Zhao away, who will definitely ask this unfortunate young man where to find a prostitute if no one intervenes. 

He stops in his tracks, realizing where he’s seen the server before, and he, too, goes cold. His mind races, a plan formulates, and he knows that the avatar has recognizes him too and will likely report him to the authorities if left alone. He has to make a move now.

—

Li turns around. “So you’ve been working at a noodle shop for the last ten years?” he asks incredulously.

“Is there something wrong with that?” Aang says defensively. His heart sinks, and he feels his life come tumbling down around him. Every time things start to go his way, something has to ruin it.

“Makes my job easier. I just thought you’d be doing something… more noble. ‘Fighting for peace.’” He draws out the words mockingly while his sidekick stands there looking confused.

“What are you doing here, Li? Taking the rest of the Earth Kingdom wasn’t enough for you?” 

“I have a proposition for you,” Li says.

Aang fights to stay composed, remembering Li’s last proposal. “I’m not interested. Tell me how you found me. This shouldn’t be possible. You shouldn’t be here!”

“What is happening?” asks the idiot who’d been hitting on Cai. “How do you know each other?” Both of them ignore him.

Li smirks. “Destiny has brought us together, my friend.”

“Leave. I’m not your friend, and I’m not helping you. I’m not helping anyone.” He rushes back inside the shop and slams the door, letting it all process in his mind. The chatter of the patrons buzzes in his ears, and the familiar smell of cooking noodles, usually so welcome after a trip to the stinking alleyway, does nothing to soothe his nerves. All that’s between him and the Fire Nation is one flimsy door.

“Where were you? We have customers waiting,” his manager scolds him.

“I’m having a bit of a personal emergency,” he explains. His hands are trembling, and the last thing he can bring himself to care about right now is someone’s soup order. “I need to leave right away. Where’s Cai?”

He doesn’t wait for a response. He finds Cai handing out drinks on the patio, and whisks away her to the privacy of the storage room. “What’s going on?” she asks nervously.

“Did you tell anyone my secret?” he demands, grabbing her by the shoulders and shaking her.

“What? No. I would never,” she says, panic rising in her voice. “What is this all about?”

He shushes her. “Are you sure?”

“I swear, I didn’t! What happened?”

He glances around the storage room. “Maybe we were overheard,” he whispers, and gets close to her ear. “The Fire Nation is here, and they know who I am. I have to leave. Maybe never come back.”

“No, no. Are you sure you aren’t overreacting? Misinterpreting something?” she says hysterically.

“That guy who was hitting on you and the man he was with. They’re from the army. They must be trying to infiltrate the city. And who am I supposed to tell? What can we do about it? Come with me. It’s not safe here anymore.”

She backs away, against the wall. “Wan. You’re not making sense. This is the safest place in the whole world.”

He stares deep into her eyes and slowly shakes his head. “Not anymore.”

Cai says nothing, only returns his gaze. He pulls her into a hug, kisses her forehead. “Meet me at my place tonight if you want to come with me.”

Li is waiting in the alleyway for him, and catches him before he has a chance to even run. “Listen, listen,” he pleads. “I think you’ll like what I have to say this time.”

Aang pretends to relent. If he can get them alone, he’ll be able to incapacitate them, making his escape from the city easier. “Fine. I’ll hear you out. But we can’t talk here,” he says.

He ends up taking him and his sidekick to the basement where he lives, figuring that it doesn’t matter, he won’t be staying here for much longer anyway. Li and the other man make themselves at home right away, dropping their belongings in the middle of the floor and sprawling out on Aang’s only two chairs.

“I’m Prince Ozai,” Li introduces himself, bowing, “And this is Captain Zhao.”

Aang raises his eyebrows skeptically. “This whole time you were a prince? And somehow it’s demeaning for me to work at a noodle shop, but not for you to dress up like a refugee and eat at said noodle shop.”

“I was unfortunate enough to be born second,” he admits, and Aang bites back a retort about Ozai’s concept of misfortune. “My brother is the crown prince. He and his army are currently on the other side of the city, trying to fight their way through the wall. I, as you may have speculated, know how foolish this is, and have opted instead for a plan of infiltration. If I succeed where my brother fails, then my father may name me crown prince.”

Ozai pauses just long enough for Aang to cut in. “And why should I care who’s in charge? You’re all the same to me.”

Ozai gazes at him with a steady, perfect confidence. “You’re wrong. When I am fire lord, I will end the war.”

Zhao audibly gasps. “What? You never told me about this!”

Again, they both ignore him. “We’re facing enough domestic issues,” Ozai explains. “We need to put the home front first. There are children without fathers, honorable families living in poverty. People aren’t happy with their leadership. That’s why I need your help. We’re going to launch an attack on the palace in two weeks, and while my army is strong, earthbenders are difficult opponents. We want your help to take the city. Minimal damage done, no civilians harmed. After my father has named me as his successor, we can liberate it again. It’ll all be over. What do you say?”

Countless thoughts and emotions run through Aang’s head, but one feeling emerges above them all: distrust. “How do I know you are who you say you are? And how do I know if you’ll keep your word?”

“If I’m lying, you’ll kill me, yes? I know why my grandfather massacred all the airbenders. You were the most dangerous, and we were lucky that you chose not to be. Once you start sucking the air out of my lungs, there’s nothing I can do to fight back.”

Zhao looks at him frantically, silently begging him to back out, but Ozai is unshakable.

Aang doesn’t tell them that he hates to kill. He won’t reveal his own weakness. “And how do I know that your father won’t live another thirty years?”

Ozai laughs coldly, and Aang wonders about the sort of company he’s invited into his life. “I assure you, he won’t. I’d give him five more years at most. So, avatar, do I have your support?”

“I’d have to think about that,” he says.

Ozai drops his stony negotiator act. “I’ll take it for now. So, do you know where we could get a room around here? We were up all night trying to get into the city, and we’re very tired.”

“I have some space in my closet,” he offers. He wants them where he can watch them. Keep your friends close. Keep your enemies closer. “You can stay here. As a token of trust between us.”

Ozai smiles. “Absolutely. As a token of trust.”

—

“That was so, that was so brave,” Zhao breathes. “I can’t believe you want to end the war and you didn’t even tell me!”

“Is that a problem?”

“Not if you think it’s the right thing for the us… It’s just that I’m afraid I won’t get to see you as much.” Zhao puts an arm over Ozai’s side, and pulls him in closer to his chest. Aang has laid out some blankets on the floor, and they lie packed together in the tight space, talking themselves to sleep.

“Is it not cramped enough as it is?” Ozai complains. “Unhand me. There’s no need to touch me like this.”

“This could be our last mission together. I’m going to miss this.” He shifts his hand lower. “And this.”

“Sex is all you can think about now?” He struggles free and sits up against the wall. “We’re inside the avatar’s closet, in a basement in enemy territory. And I can’t tell if he believes anything I said.” The negotiation hadn’t been part of the plan at all. He hadn’t even been sure what he wanted to do about the war until he’d voiced it. Hell, maybe it had been destiny that had brought them back together. 

He puts his head in his hands and rubs his temples, trying to think of what to do next. For all he knows, Aang could be out reporting them to the authorities right now. They’d heard the door shut a while ago, leaving them alone in the basement. 

“Let me take your mind off it,” Zhao suggests.

“Now is not the time,” Ozai growls. “I’m tired. Let’s sleep.”

“Why is that we only have sex when you want it? What about me? You know, you’ve never once given me a blowjob—”

“It’s because I’m the one in charge here. You don’t understand, do you? This is nothing more than just a simple exchange of favors. You give me company when I am without my wife, and in turn, I give you promotions. That’s all it is. That’s all it ever was. That’s all it ever will be.”

“Oh. I thought that…” He can’t see very well in the darkness of the enclosed space, but the sadness and disappointment in Zhao’s eyes is unmistakable. “I thought since now that this chapter in our lives is almost over, and you won’t be my commander in the field anymore, that maybe…”

Ozai’s shoulders slump, and he experiences the rare feeling of guilt. He hates to share his emotions and show weakness, but after all they’ve been through together, if there’s anyone who deserves to hear such things from him, it’s Zhao. “Come here,” he says, and Zhao crawls into his arms, rests his head on Ozai’s chest. “I know I don’t always treat you with the kindness that you’ve earned. You’re one of the most loyal and brave people I’ve met.” He stumbles over the words. “I am proud to call you my captain, and — and my friend.”

He tilts Zhao’s chin up, and gives him a chaste peck. They have never kissed before, and Zhao gets too excited, taking it as an invitation to slide his tongue into Ozai’s mouth. Ozai simply goes along with it, because kissing Zhao is turning out to be more pleasant than he’d imagined, not that he should be surprised considering what that man can do with his tongue. Zhao gasps out his name in an erotic frenzy. 

This is when the closet door opens. Horrified, Ozai breaks away from the kiss to find Aang and the server girl from the noodle shop staring back at them. Zhao, meanwhile, has not gotten the message, and moves his lips down along Ozai’s neck.

“Please don’t do this in my home,” Aang says flatly. Zhao finally looks up, startled, and the server holds back laughter. “I’ve been here the whole time.”

“But we heard the door close…” Ozai says, almost too mortified to speak.

“I was just letting Cai in. We heard everything. I was thinking, and I don’t know if I want to help you. But I do want you to teach me firebending. I know all the other elements, and it’s the only one I’m not good at.”

The change in subject is enormously welcome. “That can be arranged,” Ozai agrees.

—

That night, the four of them travel to the grove on the edge of the city. To Aang’s chagrin, Cai insists on coming. “I don’t need you to protect me,” she says. The discovery that the avatar has been living in the city undetected for years has emboldened her, and she no longer fears the secret police when they are in private. “This is the most exciting thing that’s happened to me in years. Maybe ever!”

“Do you think I should help them?” he asks. When he explains the situation, puts it into words for her, it sounds insane coming out of his mouth. Insane to trust anyone, especially a pair of firebenders. After seeing them together, hearing them argue in his closet, they feel less cold. More human. He’d inadvertently caught them in a moment of vulnerability and honesty, but he can’t let that fool him. What they’ve said also reveals their corruption, their nepotism.

“You can’t possibly believe what they’re telling you. But you should take advantage of them,” Cai advises.

And so, they go on a little excursion. He doesn’t like that he’s tainted this spot that used to belong to only him and Appa with new memories, new people, but it’s the safest, most reliable place he knows. Ozai is an impatient teacher, but he catches himself when he pushes too hard or starts to lose his temper. Aang tells himself that it won’t end up like Kona. After all, he’s the one with the upper hand and the bargaining power this time.

The session leaves all four of them feeling exhausted, tense, and wary of one another. He feels like he’s learned a lot, though, and convinces them to do it again tomorrow. By their third session, it’s just him and the prince. Cai has a shift at the noodle shop, and Zhao is supposedly scouting out the place of the invasion, but they all know that he’s really off trying to find a hooker.

“So… what are you teaching me today?” Aang asks. One on one again with a teacher again for the first time since Kona, he’s jittery and on edge. He wants to keep the lesson moving along smoothly and quickly, and if he can manage that, there won’t be any time for things to… devolve. Though he hadn’t wanted Cai to come to the previous two sessions, he wishes she were here now.

“You have your basics down,” Ozai remarks. “Your form is subpar. I would typically make you fix it before moving on, but we haven’t the time.” He looks Aang up and down. “Why are you so nervous? You’ve been doing fine so far. Well, even.”

“I don’t know,” Aang says, and it’s a bad lie.

“You’re uncomfortable being alone with me. You think I’m going to betray you,” he observes.

Aang recoils. “Can you blame me? You’re using me for your own personal gain. What will happen when you no longer need me?”

“No. We need something from each other. This exchange has two sides, and it won’t be over once we’ve taken Ba Sing Se.”

“Just do whatever you were planning on teaching me,” Aang says. He can’t let the conversation stray into more and more hostile territory, but Ozai ignores him.

“The first time I met you, you were so scared of betrayal, just like you still are. What happened to make you like this? Why can’t you get over it? Is that why you killed your waterbending teacher?”

— 

Wind starts picking up, and an unnatural light comes to Aang’s eyes. Ozai knows the uncontrollable power he’ll have in this state. He has to defuse the situation.

“I can’t teach you until you tell me what your problem is,” he says as calmly as possible, trying desperately to hide his fear. “This cannot work until I know what’s holding you back.” 

He’s lucky. The winds die down, and he breathes a sigh of relief.

Ozai is terrible at being emotional with people; it was obvious when he’d tried to comfort Zhao the other day. But if it means keeping the avatar’s cooperation, or, more importantly, not getting pulverized in four different elements, he’ll try it. Maintaining eye contact, Aang sits down on a fallen log, and he keeps looking until Ozai joins him. 

“I didn’t ask for this,” he says. He taps a foot on the floor, hangs his head down. “I didn’t ask for this responsibility. I woke up one day, and the whole world had changed. I was just a child, and it was supposed to be my duty to fix everything that had gone wrong in the last seventy years. That’s a lifetime. Everyone I knew was dead. I was alone, and whenever I confided in someone, they’d always find a way to ruin the trust we’d built.”

Ozai sits there, not saying anything. He doesn’t know what there is to say. A “that doesn’t sound fun” or an “I’m sorry” would be a good start, but he can’t squeeze the words out.

“It’s what you did to me, that day at the temple,” Aang says. “Are you going to do it again?”

“No,” he says. “Because we need each other.”

Why fool him? There will never be a real bond here. They’ve been brought together by necessity alone. He doesn’t trust his army to successfully take over the palace, and he could use the extra help of someone so powerful. And in the time after he takes the throne and ends the war, he’ll need the avatar’s authority to gain his people’s respect.

“Master Kona,” Aang chokes out, “was the worst one.” He balls up his fists, clearly psyching him up to say this. “I’d been living with the Northern Water Tribe for a while, I’d mastered waterbending, and it was time for me to find an earthbending teacher. He… he came with me. He was good in the beginning. Patient and understanding, good at explaining things. What a teacher should be. Once it was just us two, it was… different. We’d have these long training sessions where he’d push me past my limit and punish me whenever I would mess up.”

He pauses to wipe a tear from his eye. Ozai practically emanates discomfort. “Then he started visiting me at night. You can guess what happened then. I couldn’t take it anymore. I didn’t mean to kill him. I just wanted him to be unconscious so he wouldn’t… you know…”

Ozai is silent for a long time, and Aang doesn’t look at him, too busy trying not to cry. Then, “You’ve never told anyone about this before, have you?”

Aang shakes his head.

“That’s…” He audibly struggles for words. “That’s rough, buddy.”

Aang laughs through his tears. Some of the oppressive sadness surrounding their conversation lifts. “You’re terrible at this.”

“Terrible at what?” he asks. Is he being mocked?

“Terrible at comforting people.”

Aang has a point. “You’re right,” he admits quietly. He shifts uncomfortably, and tries to say something more eloquent. “I will never do anything like that to you. You should be able to choose your own destiny, and that man trifled with yours too much not to be punished for it. You should be glad he’s dead.”

“I don’t know if I can be happy with blood on my hands.”

“With his blood? I’d be.” He stands up. Well, he’d asked what was holding Aang back, and he’d gotten an answer. “I see that I can’t force you to help me. It’s up to you to make the right choice.”

—

The right choice.

Is the right choice sacrificing his own needs for the greater good of humanity? Is the right choice trusting the prince of an enemy nation to keep his word? 

It’s not always easy to know what the right choice is. 

The training session goes well. Ozai tries to be more patient with him and lets him take breaks whenever he grows frustrated. He even meditates with him during one of these pauses, sitting with his back to Aang, presumably to show trust. He fears that today is just like that day when they were kids, with Ozai trying to win him over, then turning on him. He won’t fall for it twice.

They do not talk about the invasion in the week leading up to it. He and Ozai visit the woods every day to practice, sometimes joined by Cai, or Zhao, or both. Ozai and Zhao sleep in the basement apartment, vanishing without warning to meet people who Aang has avoided thinking about. As they speak more, he learns that while Ozai has his own strict moral code, he doesn’t recognize the contradictions in his own worldview — or his own actions. He believes that people should choose their own destiny, yet he views himself as superior due to his status as royalty. He places firebenders above all other types of people, but he works with Aang and treats him more or less as an equal. He values the traditional family, yet he’s actively conspiring against his father and brother and sleeping with his deputy.

These revelations sway Aang in different directions, convincing him first of Ozai’s manipulation, then his honesty, his stupidity, his conviction. Their principles conflict, but they ultimately want the same thing: an end to the war. 

He just doesn’t know if he’s willing to sacrifice the people of Ba Sing Se to the Fire Nation — even if it’s only for a few short years at most — based on flimsy trust. But if he can sacrifice them, then one thing is clear — he can sacrifice himself.

He has to be what he was born to be.

Ozai sits across from him at the table in the basement apartment. “It’s tomorrow,” he says. “I need an answer.”

He thinks about it. It’s been all he can think about, and thinking about it more won’t change anything. “I’m not sure.”

“If you won’t help me, then I suggest you get out of the city while you still can. No matter your answer, it’s happening.”

“This is where my life is now,” he says. “I don’t know where I’d go.”

“You’d be leaving either way. I would bring you back to the palace with me. You’d have to pretend to get along with my family while I secure the throne. Or come as a fake prisoner.”

The temptation to disappear back into the world as a nobody calls to him. “What about Cai?” he asks.

“I could arrange for her to come with us, if she’s willing. Do you think you could enter the avatar state during the invasion? Your power would make our victory quick and decisive.”

“The avatar state?” Aang echoes.

“That’s what it’s called when you start glowing and levitating. All the knowledge of the previous avatars runs through you.”

All his previous selves. He’s seen bits and pieces of them in dreams, or when he slips too far into meditation. But he’s never tried to tap into them. “I can’t control it.”

“That’s fine,” Ozai says. He looks disappointed. “My wife’s grandfather was the previous avatar, so she has told me what her mother remembers of him. He opposed the war before it even began… and I believe he would want you to help me.”

—

The next day, precisely at sunrise, Fire Nation soldiers dressed in the brown and green tones of Earth Kingdom civilians congregate around the palace, creeping into the upper ring and emerging out of the woodwork. Despite the doubt Ozai has expressed in them, they are organized and swift, and it only takes them a minute to adjust and finalize their battle plan.

After all, Cai had revealed some valuable advice: take out the Dai Li. They hold more power than the king.

He nods to Zhao, then to Aang, who looks nervous, as if he’s about to vomit. He feels bad for the him, but there’s no time to reassure him. The guards milling around the palace wall notice the suspicious group, but Ozai’s forces strike before they can do anything. The peaceful morning quickly turns violent with the crashing of stone and the roaring of flame.

He leads the charge up the steps, keeping Aang and Zhao at his side. The avatar relies heavily on his rudimentary firebending, though Ozai catches glimpses of him fending off attacks with subtle earth and airbending maneuvers. 

The other group of soldiers coming from the back of the palace meets him once they’ve broken through the grand double doors. The fight has been easy enough up to this point — despite their lack of tanks and the other usual military gear that has aided them on previous missions — but his forces start dropping at an alarming rate once the men in long green robes appear. Stone hands clasp around his soldiers, incapacitating them. 

Ozai falls back and instructs Aang to do the same. “You’ve got to do something,” he hisses. Aang has been keeping a low profile up to this point, but now Ozai needs him. “You’re our secret weapon!”

Aang just stares at him, frozen in place. He probably hasn’t seen combat like this in years. Ozai feels like grabbing his shoulders and shaking him, but he can’t afford to lose control over himself, because it means he’ll lose Aang.

He can’t stop himself. “Do something!” he screams. Flames ignite in his palms. He wants to lash out, hit the avatar with his burning fists, but the battle draws his attention before he does something utterly foolish. A rock hurtles at them, and he shoves Aang out of the way, taking the blow instead. 

It knocks the wind out of him, and his head slams against the wall. The world spins around him for a moment, and he wonders if this is what Master Kona’s last moments felt like. More stones hurtle toward them, but Aang steps in front of him, winds whipping up and the people around him backing off to stare at the impossible scene happening before them.

Yes, Ozai thinks before he blacks out.


	3. Fire

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> heads up that ozai is just going to get more racist cause that’s just how he is babeyyyy

CHAPTER 3: Fire

“I just did what I thought would help us all in the long-term!” Aang protests.

“Well, did you think through what might happen to us in the short-term?” Cai explodes. “The city’s going to be crawling with Fire Nation soldiers. Who knows what they might do! And who knows when it’ll end!”

“Ozai and I will do everything in our power to get him on the throne as quickly as possible! The Fire Nation will be gone soon. I promise.” He tries to reach for her hand, but she yanks it away.

“I didn’t think you’d actually do it,” Cai says. Her voice is low and broken, and she spits out the words. Tears well up in the corners of her eyes. “I can’t believe you. Don’t ask me to go to the Fire Nation with you, because I won’t. There’s no way. I’m staying here, with my family, to help them through what you’ve done to us.”

“But Cai—”

“You spent so much time hiding because you wouldn’t sacrifice yourself. But you sacrificed all of us with barely a thought!”

“You know I thought about it—”

“Get out! Leave. You’ve chosen your side. You don’t belong here anymore.”

Anger churns inside him, and he realizes what he’s done. Cai had been only person he’d trusted enough to tell about his true identity. And in turn, she’d trusted him enough to keep his secrets. 

And in his fear of being betrayed, he hadn’t thought about how she would feel about his actions. He’d been the one to betray her. 

“I never belonged here,” he says solemnly. “I don’t belong anywhere.”

“You belong in the Fire Nation now,” she spits, but he barely hears her.

“I enjoyed being with you,” he says. He cannot afford to have made the wrong choice. “And I’m going to do all I can to make sure this turns out right.” Because it has to be right. “Good-bye.”

—

Fire Lord Azulon is an old, weak man, and his time is coming to an end. The nation needs someone young and strong, someone who will command from the throne within the flames rather than shrink back into it as if it is a hiding place.

Ozai does not let his disdain show. His days of wishing for his father’s love and approval are over. Now, he needs Azulon’s favor for one thing and one thing only.

He kneels before the throne. Aang is beside him, head down. “Perhaps I was wrong to underestimate your strategy, as unorthodox as it was,” Azulon muses, and waves his hand absently. “Your success, yes… it has far exceeded my expectations.”

Ozai suppresses a scowl. His father has always been exceptional at giving him insults disguised as compliments. What follows cannot be good.

“Iroh will handle Ba Sing Se’s transition into a Fire Nation colony. I want you here, dealing with domestic issues. The avatar may be of aid, I imagine.”

Ozai swallows. His fists tighten. That’s why Iroh hasn’t joined them in the palace, he supposes. “Father, for such a feat, I was picturing… a reward,” he says carefully.

“What is it that you want? A parade in your honor? A holiday?”

He keeps his eyes trained on the red carpet. “I was expecting to be made… crown prince.”

Azulon laughs. “You cannot be serious. It’s your brother’s birthright. He has always been such a natural leader, while you…” He trails off, and Ozai seethes.

Aang jumps in to Ozai’s defense. “I think Prince Ozai is a great leader. If he wasn’t, he wouldn’t have succeeded at Ba Sing Se. His soldiers trusted in him, and his ‘unorthodox’ plans, as you call them, might be key not only to winning the war, but to improving things domestically. I mean, he even managed to win me over. I’ve never met Prince Iroh, but Ozai has proven that he can outperform him at just about anything.”

Silently, he thanks Aang for defusing the situation before his temper had flared up and threatened to ruin everything. “The rest of the Earth Kingdom will fall easily, and it’s because of me. Iroh’s siege could have gone on for years longer if I hadn’t attacked from the inside,” he adds. “Please, Father. I could do so much more for the Fire Nation if given the chance.”

“Very well,” Azulon concedes. “A large reward is in order for such a feat. I’ll consider your request.”

—

“Thank you for covering me,” Ozai whispers in his ear, nudging him on their way out of the throne room.

“Yeah, no problem,” he says. His throat is dry. It doesn’t feel safe here, even with Ozai on his side. These are the people who slaughtered his entire nation. Of course they want him dead right along with the rest the airbenders — at least once he stops being useful. Cai’s words ring in his head, and he feels that he’s betrayed not only her, but the memory of the air nomads, and himself, too.

It’s disgusting just to be here, but he has to believe that it will pay off.

“Come with me,” Ozai says, and they silently walk to the courtyard.

“What if he doesn’t give it to you?” Aang asks quietly. As much as he hates this place, he must admit that despite its artificiality, the garden is beautiful — the neatly trimmed array of plants lining the paths, the masterfully carved fountains, the sunlight streaming down and reflecting off the pond.

“He will.” A leaf falls onto the water, sending ripples across the surface. He clasps his hands behind his back. “He has to.”

Aang fidgets in the stiff, scratchy clothing he’s been given. He eyes his reflection in the pond; all the red doesn’t look good on him. “It didn’t sound like it.”

“Then I’ll take it. We find some way to disgrace my brother, and dealing with my nephew should not be a problem. He’s just a child.”

Aang doesn’t want to think about what ‘dealing with’ Prince Iroh’s son entails. He already knows that Ozai plays dirty to get what he wants, and he has to hope it won’t come to that. When he speaks of honor, it’s a facade, a ploy to make himself feel superior, and he can twist it to mean whatever he wants it to.

“But he will. Because of me, the war is… well, it’s not won. But if I don’t succeed my father soon, then it will be.” He turns to look at Aang dolefully. “Do you know how much work goes into creating a colony? Those are resources that should go towards my people. Certainly, the labor and the natural resources from the lands of the conquered may be of use, but it is better that people stick to their own kind.”

The cold way he talks about exploiting people like tools chills Aang, and on top of that, there is his last statement. Stick to your own kind. He’d thought maybe there could be friendship between them — after all, Ozai is the only person he’s told about Kona, and he’s risked everything to help him — but the message is clear. This is nothing more than a strategic alliance. It’s the exact delusion Zhao had fallen into — Ozai is not trying to be anyone’s friend or lover. It’s an exchange of favors, and there is no emotion involved. 

And yet, Aang had once gotten a glimpse of a softer part of him.

“So, once you’re crown prince…” Aang begins.

“My father must be removed,” he says. “We can’t act immediately, otherwise it will be too suspicious, but we cannot afford to wait, either. He is old. People are expecting him to die soon.”

Can’t you bend the breath from people’s lungs? Mara asks him from a lifetime ago. She’d been telling him to finish off a Fire Nation soldier, and now, here he is, walking among them, feigning support for their endless war.

He whispers his question, but does not add the unspoken second part. “And will he die soon?”

Before they can finish formulating their plan, a child’s joyful shriek interrupts them. Aang glances over to see a smiling young boy running towards them, and a girl toddling after him. Ozai opens his arms and scoops up the child, swinging him in the air. It seems strange, incongruent with his perception of the prince, to see him express such joy… especially right after discussing a plot to murder and usurp his father.

Then he sees the woman laughing from across the courtyard. She wanders over slowly, hitching up her skirts to cross the lawn. Ozai holds the girl in one arm, and his wife melts into his embrace as he clasps the other around her shoulders.

Standing on the periphery of the happy family reunion only reminds Aang that he’s more alone than ever, and what he has to do to make things right with Cai. He wonders if he will even see her again. (Then he remembers that Ozai is screwing Captain Zhao behind his wife’s back, and he feels a little less jealous.)

“I heard what you did!” His wife seems so excited for him. The little boy stares up at his father and babbles out questions, and Ozai just ruffles his hair, otherwise ignoring him.

He defers the credit, gesturing grandly to Aang. “I couldn’t have done it without Avatar Aang.”

He feels their eyes on him all at once. The woman’s eyes, mostly. A look of wariness flits over her pretty features before it’s replaced with a knowing respect. Aang… feels something stirring. It’s not enough for him to consciously address it, but it’s there.

She bows to him. “This is my wife, Ursa,” Ozai introduces her, “and my son, Zuko, and my daughter, Azula.”

“Can you really bend all the elements?” Zuko chatters. “Can you show me? Please, please, please?”

“Maybe some other time,” Ursa answers for him. “Your father and the avatar have had a long trip, and need some time to relax, okay? Why don’t you run along to the nanny? Take your sister.”

He stamps his foot and pouts. “But Dad only just got home!”

“Go along. I’ll see you at dinner,” Ozai says sternly, setting down the toddler.

Once the kids have run off, Ursa sighs. “They’re a handful,” she laughs, and she turns to Ozai. “So, you’re next in line? Do I get to be the queen of this place yet?”

“He said he’ll consider it,” Ozai replies.

“I think you’ve earned it,” she says softly, and when she smiles, Aang’s stomach tightens.

Ozai's expression is stony. He doesn’t react to her warm embrace or her lingering caresses, to any of her affection.

“We’ll see soon enough what my father thinks.”

—

With all of Ba Sing Se’s leaders dead or imprisoned, the Earth Kingdom army doesn’t last long, and Iroh is able to break through the wall. Before he’s sent back to facilitate the colonization, he comes home briefly.

“Tea?” Iroh offers him a steaming cup. The curtains are drawn, and only a sliver of evening light creeps into the room.

“You know I’ve never much cared for it,” Ozai says. He sits with his back to the wall, near the door. In spite of their shared accomplishment, the tension between them is stifling.

“Hm.” He sets the tray down between them anyway, and takes a sip. “I hear you’ve asked Father to make you crown prince.”

“I’ve earned it. How could he refuse to crown me after what I’ve done for this nation?” he snaps defensively.

“It may surprise you,” Iroh says, sipping again, “but I won’t contest it. I came within a hair’s breadth of my life during that siege, and it’s led me to reevaluate what’s most important to me.”

He’s right — it is a surprise. “You’re serious,” he says in disbelief.

“Yes, yes, of course I am. Family, friends, good company. The simpler things in life — fine food and drink. My wife has been very sick recently, and I want to spend more time with her and Lu Ten before he goes to back to the academy, and she…” His face crumples, and Ozai wishes that people would stop revealing their deepest sadnesses and darkest traumas to him, because he doesn’t know how to react.

Thankfully, Iroh pulls himself together. “You have my support, brother,” he affirms. “I have only one question: how did you win over the avatar?”

After Iroh’s confession, he wonders how much he can say. Eyeing the door, he half-considers making a break for it, but he knows it won’t help anything.

“I promised him peace,” he whispers.

Iroh finishes his tea. “And do you intend to deliver on this promise?”

His eyes dart to the slight gap between the curtains. “I can’t answer that.”

“If you betray his trust, you will have made a powerful enemy,” Iroh warns.

He thinks about how everyone else in Aang’s life has turned on him in some way. “I know.”

—

Two weeks after Aang’s arrival, Azulon names Ozai the new crown prince. They decide to wait three more months to kill him. Ursa is in on the plan as well. She wants an end to the war as well, doesn’t want her children to learn the leadership skills they’ll need from the front lines of an army. She hadn’t known him, but her grandfather had been the war’s very first protestor, a world citizen who recognized the beauty of every nation he’d visited. It’s too bad, Aang thinks, that the part of her that appreciates other cultures hasn’t rubbed off on Ozai.

She’s much more open-minded than he’d expected of a Fire Nation royal, curious about the air nomads and about his past, but she avoids the topic of Kona. Maybe Ozai has told her already, but he appreciates that she seems to intuitively pick up on what makes him uncomfortable to discuss, and then avoids those topics. Her openness and kindness makes her easy to talk to, and in fact, she understands him better than anyone he’s met in a long, long time.

It’s hard to get her alone, but he doesn’t mind too much. She was right — the kids are a handful — but they’re also a delight, even when they’re accidentally setting valuable tapestries or rare flowers from the garden on fire. When he’s around them, he finds himself rediscovering the childlike innocence he’d once had, and it doesn’t take long for them to start calling him Uncle Aang.

He realizes how much he’s been missing in life. What he wants is a family, and right now, he’s just borrowing someone else’s.

But does it have to be that way? Ursa is an attractive woman, and they connect so well, and…

It would be wrong. Besides, he was her grandfather in his past life. Soon he will be out of the palace, and he can go about finding someone more available. He’s already started meeting women who are interested in him, but they only want him for his status. They don’t know about the plot to stop the war. The act he has to put on during those three months is revolting, and he feels like vomiting every time he’s in the spotlight. They all ask about where he was for seventy years, why he killed Kona, why he switched sides.

Finally, the time comes to remove Azulon. Aang is at least relieved that he won’t have to be the one to assassinate the fire lord — he feels guilty just being involved in it. Ursa knows how to make a poison that kills without leaving a trace, and she has a servant who’s in on the plot slip it into his drink. Aang wonders if there’s another way, but he thinks about Cai and everyone else in Ba Sing Se, and the soldiers fighting all around the world, and he knows that they’ve already waited too long.

Azulon is late to a meeting the next morning, and another servant finds him dead in his bed, laying there peacefully as if asleep.

The funeral and the coronation are rolled into one day. Ozai gives a eulogy for his father, his words empty. Aang stands by and tries to look solemn, thankful that he doesn’t have to say anything.

“When are you going to announce the end of the war?” Aang asks after it’s over. He’s taken to swinging by Ozai’s room at night in hopes of getting Ursa alone for a few minutes. Ozai is preparing for bed, but he hasn’t taken his new crown off yet, and Ursa is in the adjacent bathroom, washing up. 

“We’ve waited long enough,” Ozai says. “First thing tomorrow, I’ll start calling back troops. I would’ve said it at the coronation, but I didn’t want it to look too suspicious.” He laughs coldly, and not for the first time, Aang wonders what sort of scheme he’s gotten himself entangled in. To think that it’s over now that Azulon is dead is foolish. It’s only just begun. “The kids have been asking what happened to Azulon. Azula is too young to understand, but Zuko is taking it hard. To me, it seems as though he’s more shaken by the concept of death than by the loss of his grandfather,” Ozai muses.

He finally takes off the crown and sets it on the dresser. “My father wasn’t very close with them. He wasn’t close with anyone, really. Not even Iroh, or my mother.” He runs a brush through his long black hair. “I thought I would be upset when this day came. But I don’t. If anything, I feel happy.”

Aang supposes that he finds it ironic. He’s seen how Ozai treats his family. He lets Ursa do all the labor — emotional and physical — and offers little affection to his children, mostly stern words of discipline. But Aang doesn’t feel like he’s in a secure enough place to tell Ozai what to do so that his children won’t glad when he dies. They need an emotional connection for that, and he already knows that’s not Ozai’s strong point.

“As your friend…” Aang starts, hoping to hear Ozai confirm that they are, indeed, friends, “I think you’ll be a better fire lord than Azulon, but if you want to be a better father than him, you could be a little more open with your family.”

Ozai doesn’t take the tentative criticism well. “What do you know about family?” he barks.

Hurt, Aang tries to backpedal, but accidentally drives his point home. “Sorry, you were talking about how distant your father is, and you’re kind of the same way—”

“How dare you suggest that I’m like my father.” Ozai backs him against the wall, leering menacingly. “Listen to me, Avatar. I will entertain your advice on political matters, but don’t ever tell me how to run my personal affairs.”

“Is something wrong?” Ursa emerges from the bathroom, wrapped in a towel. Even in the heat of the argument, Aang finds himself distracted by her cleavage and the way the water glistens on her bare skin.

“Get out of my room,” Ozai growls.

—

The lights are off, and Ursa lays snuggled up against him. He wonders if it’s strange the way they sleep, with her pressed up against his back, holding him to her chest. “Do you think I’m like my father?” he says into the darkness.

“Of course not,” she murmurs. Usually, the sound of her voice just before she falls asleep makes him smile, but he’s distracted. “You’re doing the exact opposite of him, aren’t you?”

“I don’t mean like that.” He pauses. The moon peaks through the window, and the trees outside sway in the breeze. “I mean as a parent myself.”

“You could stand to be more patient with the kids,” she says, “and to spend a little more time with them. But you’ve got a lot on your plate.” She brushes aside a strand of hair to kiss his cheek. “Have I mentioned how proud I am of you?”

“Yes, I do,” he says, “and yes, you have.” 

He pulls away from her, and she whines in protest. “Where are you going? Come back to bed.”

“I’m not tired yet,” he says, and gets up out of spite more than anything else. “And I still have work to do.” 

If she thinks he’s like his father, then he doesn’t want to be around her.

The next morning, with Iroh and Aang at his side, he announces the end of the war. The generals are shocked that the man responsible for the fall of Ba Sing Se wants to reverse such monumental progress, and they blame the avatar for manipulating him. Despite their fight the previous night, Ozai comes to Aang’s defense, telling his subordinates that he had come to the decision years ago. That the resources expended in the war could be put to better use at home, that a time of peace could lead to prosperity and cultural revival.

He senses that he has already made enemies, but they will not disobey their fire lord.

Zhao stays behind after the meeting. “I have a special mission for you,” Ozai says. “I’m sending you back to Ba Sing Se. Find Cai, and bring her back here.”

He’s seen the way Aang has been looking at his wife, and he knows how much time they’ve been spending together. Without driving a rift further between them, he has to put a stop to that.

“What if she refuses to come with me, my lord?”

Ozai has heard his title from Zhao’s lips countless times, but the fact that it’s real now sends a shiver of excitement down his spine.

“Do whatever it takes,” he says. Even if things were to go wrong between Aang and Cai, he gets the sense that it will at least put Aang off pursuing other relationships.

“Yes, my lord,” Zhao says, bowing respectfully. “I’m happy for you, that you finally got what you wanted. Even if it means…” He trails off, gaze drifting elsewhere.

“Yes.” His mouth curves into a smirk. He ignores where Zhao had been going with his comment, imagining everything he can do now that he has the power. “I’m happy too.”

—

The months following Ozai’s ascension to fire lord are chaotic. Rumors abound of foul play and blackmail surrounding Azulon’s death and Ozai’s sudden change of heart about the war, ones that Ozai denies fervently. Aang accompanies him for every public appearance, every speech explaining his plans for the future. Opinion in the Fire Nation is sharply divided, with many lamenting the eighty years of progress that have just been thrown out, and many relieved to hear that their sons and fathers are coming home.

Likewise, they are divided on how they see Aang. To some, he is a novelty, an extinct creature walking among them; to others, an outsider, to be feared and hated; to yet others, a valuable new ally, a hero. What he hears in Ozai’s speeches reinforces both the outsider and the hero narrative: that contact with other nations has tainted the Fire Nation’s greatness, but Aang’s special status makes him an exception. Even with this caveat, such a way of thinking sets him on edge.

They’ve just come back from a weeklong tour around the country, and he has to admit that the Fire Nation does have great natural beauty and a rich cultural history — he can understand why Ozai wants to preserve that. Aang drops by Ursa and Ozai’s quarters before going to sleep, as he usually does when he’s in the palace. When Ozai is there, he’ll quickly say goodnight, but if Ursa is alone, he’ll sit and talk.

He’s in luck. She’s lying in bed reading, wet hair wrapped up in a towel. “Hey,” he says, and she smiles warmly. 

“How’d the speeches go?” she asks.

“All the same, mostly,” he replies with a shrug, and invites himself into the armchair in the corner of the room. “Usually, I stand by and wave, but today the crowd wanted me to talk too.”

“So did you?”

“I said a few words agreeing with Ozai. About how I wish my people and culture could’ve been preserved, so the Fire Nation should take the chance while they still have it. The usual stuff.” He has to consciously remind himself that he isn’t betraying the memory of the air nomads. Ozai has denounced the actions of his forefathers. But still, there’s something about his rhetoric…

She scoots across the bed to whisper to him. “How do you just stand there and listen to him? Doesn’t it bother you?” Aang glances over his shoulder, but Ursa reassures him that there’s nothing to worry about. “He’s still in a meeting. He won’t be back for another hour.”

It’s strange to hear dissent from someone in Ozai’s inner circle, and Aang takes a moment to process what she’s saying. “Yeah,” he says finally. “But the war’s over. There’s no one for him to hurt.”

Unless they betrayed him, that was.

“I don’t know about that,” Ursa says. “I thought things would be simple now. I should know him better than that.” She shakes her head slowly. “Things are never simple with him.”

It’s tempting to pounce on her dissatisfaction, to hear where else Ozai comes short, but Aang controls himself. “I’ve had enough of politics,” he yawns, and cracks a tired smile. “It was easier when I was a boy stealing food from soldiers in the rebellion.”

It’s not very funny, but she laughs. “Come, sit in the bed with me. No harm in staying a while.”

He yawns again, making a point to exaggerate. He’s about to tell her that he has to go, but she reaches up to let down her hair. In the process, the towel around her breasts slips a little lower. Just like that, his filter is gone. “Are you happy with him?” he whispers.

She sighs and leans back. “That’s such a hard question to answer,” she murmurs. “He’s so passionate, and I really think he’s trying his best to do what he thinks is right. I love that about him.” She gazes off, and her eyes soften. Aang feels a twinge of jealousy. “But he’s never there, you know? He doesn’t have time for me or the kids.”

“It must be hard,” he says. “They must feel like they have only one parent.”

“Well, they have you.” She reaches out and squeezes his hand, and his heart races at her touch. “He expects them to act like adults and be on their best behavior all the time. You’re much kinder and patient with them. And,” she adds softly, as if she doesn’t want to say it at all, “with me.”

Her brow furrows, and she runs her thumb over the back of his hand. He leans in to kiss her, and their lips brush for an instant before she pulls away and climbs out of bed. 

“I’m sorry. We shouldn’t have done that.” She winces, and the sight of distress on her pretty face hurts him more than the rejection. “I don’t want to give you the wrong idea. I’m very proud of him, and it wouldn’t look good if we were to… Listen, I have to get changed for bed. You’d ought to get some sleep, too.”

“Sorry,” he says, taken aback. Embarrassment and shame burn inside him like alcohol. “You’re right. I like you. A lot. But we can’t do this.”

—

Ozai sits in his office holding the crumpled letter in his hand, unwilling to believe what he’s read.

“You wanted to see me?” Aang pokes his head through the door. Normally, Ozai’s subordinates knock, but he’s granted the avatar a little more freedom.

“Yes. Come in,” he says, and Aang takes a seat across from him. “I wanted to surprise you, but there’s been trouble.”

“Why, what’s going on?”

“I wanted to bring Cai back here for you,” he says. “I sent Zhao to find her. But there were riots in the city during its occupation. Reportedly, she’s dead.”

“She’s…?” Aang echoes. Ozai fears for a moment that he’s about to enter the avatar state, but he doesn’t. He just looks sad. “This is my fault,” he says. His voice drags.

“It’s not. You didn’t choose for her to go to a riot where she would get herself killed. She made that decision on her own.” He debates whether or not to tell Aang the second part, and he can’t stop himself. The words tumble out. “Zhao’s very badly injured, and that is my fault. I thought it would be safe now that the war is over, but they don’t take kindly to firebenders in Ba Sing Se, especially… after what I did. He was struck with a boulder, and it broke his spine. The doctors are saying that if he survives, he’ll never walk again.”

“I’m sorry,” Aang says quietly.

He bites his lip, hard, to distract himself from his own overwhelming weakness. “It happened on mission I sent him on. After all we’d been through together, I was confident in his success.”

“But you did it for me. You wanted me to be with Cai. And just think about all the people you’ve saved by ending the war. You couldn’t have known this would happen.”

He glances at Aang from the corner of his eye. He could come clean, and tell him that the ploy to bring Cai to the Fire Nation had come from a place of selfishness. He’d just wanted to keep him away from Ursa. 

But he doesn’t. “Yes,” he says instead. “I did it for you. That doesn’t make it either of our faults.” His fists clench and unclench around the arms of his chair. He hasn’t cried since he was eight years old. He didn’t cry when his mother died. He didn’t cry during the war. He doesn’t know why he’s getting so emotional over some buffoon who’d happened to be good in bed.

“There’s nothing wrong with being upset,” Aang says. “He’s your friend.”

But Ozai is supposed to be strong, a leader. He cannot show weakness. He cannot admit that Aang might’ve had a point, that he is distant, that he doesn’t treat Ursa or the kids right — that if he doesn’t show the people closest to him that he cares for them while he still can, one day it will be too late.

“Thank you, Aang,” he says. “I’m sorry for your loss. You are dismissed.”

—

Aang returns to his quarters to be alone. He feels as though he’s about to cry, but the tears never come.

He hadn’t meant for it to end this way, and now he’ll never be able to make things up to her. He’d always known that Cai wasn’t the one for him, and how he feels about Ursa now only reinforces that. But she’d deserved to live. She’d deserved justice. He’s caused so many other deaths while running from his duty, and now he’s still causing them by doing it. 

There’s no answer. There’s no right choice.

Nonetheless, in the coming years, he doubles down on his support for Ozai. He’s put too much time and too many resources into this solution, sacrificed too much to abandon it. 

Ozai brings a number of changes to the regime. One of the first things he does is relinquish the colonies. He receives a surprising amount of backlash from the colonists themselves, many of whom have lived under the Fire Nation their whole lives and consider it to be their country. He encourages this group to immigrate to the homeland. Others, meanwhile, seek independence, and some want to rejoin the Earth Kingdom. Another war breaks out between these factions, but it is comparatively short-lived when the Earth Kingdom reabsorbs them within the year. 

Ozai does not involve the Fire Nation in the conflict, and he does not reopen diplomatic or trade relations with the other nations, either. He’s determined to be self-sufficient, and as a result, the economy takes a blow, but it soon stabilizes as the country adapts.

The military, too, becomes largely obsolete. Ozai maintains a peacetime army, but many soldiers are absorbed into other areas of government, such as bureaus and ministries. The ranks of the police force swell, as does the prison population. 

The whole time, Aang finds himself growing closer to Ursa, the rest of the royal family, and even other politicians and the palace servants. Although both he and Ozai are heavily involved in politics, Ozai dedicates himself to his work to the point of obsession, while Aang leaves time for leisure. He’s finally met people who accept him for who he is — or most of him, anyway — and it’s a luxury he hasn’t experienced in years. Fire Nation culture is so different from his own, and this is the main thing that bothers him, still makes him feel like he’s alone even when he’s surrounded by friends. 

So he assimilates. Grows his hair out, dresses in red and gold, acts serious, obeys hierarchy. He doesn’t pretend to know what’s best for a nation that isn’t his, and more often than not, he goes along with Ozai’s proposals. They still clash over differing opinions and courses of action, but the fire lord keeps him around thanks to his knack for pointing out ideas that Ozai overlooks in his haste to push resolutions through the council. Aang notices that his propositions become more extreme when no one is there to stop him — for instance, locking up prisoners isn’t enough in some cases; he wants to execute them instead. Aang manages to talk him out of it, unwilling to think about where things could’ve gone if he hadn’t been there to convince him otherwise.

He’s still himself around Ursa. She, unlike Ozai, has always been accepting of his otherness. It takes them a long time to act on the feelings they’ve forced themselves to repress. One night, she tries to leap all the way from hand-holding and chaste kisses to sex. It’s too much all at once, and he breaks down and tells her about Kona.

She’s as understanding as always, and from there, they take it slowly. She’s nothing like the dead waterbending master, instead responsive to his needs and sensitive to his worries. He finds that sex is something that can be enjoyed, but it’s not special. He likes it no more or less than any other activity with her, though he’s glad to have overcome his fear.

But he has a new fear. Thought they’re cautious and discreet, every time he so much as reaches out to caress her, or tells her something romantic, he feels like he’s living a lie. He’d wanted to be friends with Ozai in the beginning, but a desire for peace is still the only thing uniting them. They have moments of closeness, but Ozai’s barriers rarely come down, and increasingly, the fervor of his beliefs scare him. He worries that he’s ruined their marriage, but Ursa tells him that it’s not his fault. It had all started to go downhill when Ozai had become fire lord.

He grows closer to the children as well. With Iroh and Lu Ten’s help, he masters firebending, and helps them teach Zuko and Azula. They’re both quick learners, but Azula is quicker, and she surpasses her brother’s skill by the age of six. Ozai has grown progressively more distant from his family, caught up in the stress of his leading his nation and frustrated with the constant displeasure of his people, but he notices Azula's talent. Her prowess and her cold, calculating demeanor make her his obvious favorite.

Some good things come of it. Previously, Ozai had held the belief that women were meant to stay in the home, but when he sees her potential, he passes laws to make the public sphere more accessible to them. But in the palace, it creates tension in the family, and the potential for more political intrigue. Iroh may have abdicated his position, but Lu Ten is still next in line for the throne, not Azula.

Aang does everything he can to act like a father figure to both of the children, treating them fairly — even though there’s something a little off about Azula, and he secretly harbors a preference for Zuko. His involvement in the family gets him in trouble with Ozai a few times, but even with the rocky relationship they’ve built, Aang is still too valuable an ally to lose. He’s a living example of why culture must be protected and preserved, but a growing tide of voices want him out of his position of power, if not out of the country entirely. These are the people who have bought into Ozai’s rhetoric about other countries tainting the greatness of the Fire Nation. The post-war cultural revival that Ozai had promised does not come, and there are still outsiders to be blamed. Immigration stops; borders close off. Deportations start; those without firebenders in their lineage are sent back to their home countries, and this time, Aang isn’t able to dissuade him. His methods of determining family history are imprecise at best, and at worst, come across as an arbitrary excuse to purge anyone he desires. 

Aang fights him at every turn, and as there becomes less and less they can compromise on, he realizes that time is running out for him. Ozai has kept him on the council of advisors, has listened to his advice in hopes of achieving a more balanced perspective, but if Aang doesn’t step down soon, Ozai’s own rhetoric touting a fear of outsiders just might do him in.

But if he does step down, then what’s to stop Ozai from abandoning balance entirely?

Unfortunately for him, it turns out to be a decision he doesn’t get to make.

—

A peasant comes to see him, groveling and pathetic. “My lord,” he whines, “my wife was deported to the Earth Kingdom, I believe, mistakenly. She wasn’t a bender, but I assure you, her mother was.”

Ozai lazily taps his foot on the floor. There has been so much information flowing into the Deportation Bureau that he’s had take up some of the grunt work himself. “And is your mother-in-law available?” he asks.

“No, my lord, she passed away several years ago.”

“Then there’s no way to tell, is there? Unless she has other family?” There have been cases of people faking family relations, and it’s led Ozai to establish a system of identification for his subjects. Documenting every single person in the country is difficult and time-consuming, but as fire lord, his work is never done.

“No, my lord, I’m afraid not.”

“Then I don’t see how you can prove that your wife belonged here,” he says coldly. “This is done.”

The peasant tries to protest, but the guards escort him out.

“That’s the last one, sir,” one tells him. Ozai uncrosses his legs and yawns. It’s been a long day, and he has missed the birth of his third child to listen to the pleas of commoners. While some had been like the last man, most had come to turn in their neighbors. 

He smiles as he walks to the infirmary. He’s getting through to these people.

Ursa is asleep when he arrives, but she starts awake when he puts a hand on her shoulder. A midwife bows to him and hands him the infant, swaddled in a white blanket. He hadn’t wanted another child — he’s already certain that Azula will be his heir — but Ursa had begged him.

The baby doesn’t have the spark in his eyes. Ozai is disappointed, and hopes that this child won’t turn out like Zuko. He’s let Ursa, Aang, and Iroh coddle that boy too much, but it’s not his fault he’s too busy leading his nation to parent.

“I want to name him Zaru,” Ursa says softly. He sits down at her bedside. It’s rare to get an intimate moment with her anymore, and part of him yearns for a simpler time. 

Not that any of his life has ever been simple.

“Zaru,” he echoes. The boy’s eyelids grow heavy, and he’s asleep within the minute. They hadn’t gotten the time to talk about names, and he’s about to ask her why she’d chosen this one when she speaks again.

“I miss this,” she whispers, and leans into his chest. He’s torn apart so many families that for a moment he fools himself into thinking that he doesn’t deserve this. But he has earned his way into this position, he has inspired his people.

“So do I,” he admits. “But those times weren’t perfect, either.”

“Remember when all we thought we had to do was end the war?” She smiles meekly. “Now all this deportation, and identification… it’s exhausting.”

“Let’s just have this moment,” he says, and shuts his eyes. She’s right — it’s exhausting. He thinks back to a conversation he’d had with Aang years ago. That he should tell the people closest to him that he cares for them before they’re gone.

But when he looks at Ursa, he doesn’t know if he really cares for her anymore. They’ve grown apart over the years — he’s dedicated himself to his job; she’s dedicated herself to their children. Their paths have diverged.

He misses what they’d once had, so he spends the moment pretending.

—

Six months later, Aang’s decision is made for him.

He’s meditating in his room when the door slams open and Ozai storms in. Before Aang can confront him, Ozai tackles him and they roll onto the floor, his hands, burning, searing, scorching, squeezing around his neck.

“Do you want to explain why my son is an airbender?” he roars. Aang rolls out from under him, narrowly dodging a fireball.

“You don’t want to fight me,” Aang says about as calmly as he can. He’s lucky that Ozai has succumbed to irrational anger instead of sending in his guards while he sleeps. “You won’t win. Maybe we can talk—”

“I’ve seen all I need to see!” Electricity crackles, and Aang dives behind the bed before the lightning strikes. Can’t you bend the breath from people’s lungs? asks a long-dormant voice from his memory. The window shatters, and Aang bends the air to shield himself from the flying glass.

“Don’t do this, Ozai. This is your last warning,” he shouts over the sound of the fire lord’s raging.

He doesn’t listen, so Aang does what needs to be done. The air flows in a steady stream from Ozai’s mouth and into Aang’s fingertips. Ozai clasps at his throat as if trying to pry off invisible hands, and the instant he collapses, unconscious, Aang stops. Even if things have gone bad between them, even if they were never right to begin with — he refuses to let this end like it did with Kona.

He kneels by Ozai’s unmoving form. He’s still breathing, and Aang sighs in relief. There’s no time to do anything else — he has to find Ursa and the kids right now.

He runs into her in the hallway; she must’ve followed Ozai in. “Aang, Aang, are you all right?” she asks franticly, but her voice is low.

“I’m fine,” he says. His neck is burning, and he’s still having trouble breathing, but that’s beside the point. “He attacked me, but he’s unconscious. We have to get out of here before he hurts you or the baby. Where are the kids?”

“I told them to stay in the garden,” she says. “What are we doing?”

He grabs her by the hand, and they hurry through the palace. A guard shoots them a funny look, but he doesn’t say anything. They have act normal if they want to escape in one piece.

“It’s not safe here anymore,” he pants. They slow as they pass through the door taking them into the courtyard. “We have to take the kids and leave.”

“What do you mean? All of them?” she wonders.

“You mean to leave Zuko and Azula here?”

“He’ll track us down. He might track us down even if we don’t take them, but if we do…”

He squeezes her hand, and in spite of it all, thinks to make a joke. “If you’ll remember, I’m very good at disappearing. If we’re found, I can protect us.” 

This is his family now, and he will be true to his word. 

Even if it means he must bend the breath from the lungs of his enemies.

—

He should’ve known. It’s what he’s been saying for years now. Foreigners are ruining the Fire Nation — hindering cultural growth, running things behind Ozai’s back, stealing firebender women, and tainting pure bloodlines.

He should’ve known. The very thing he’d been warning his people of had happened to him. He’d wanted to make an exception for Aang. As much as their values had come into conflict, they’d strived for the same things: peace, preservation, security. Aang had understood his goals, even if he didn’t always agree with his means. 

He’d wanted to make an exception, but Aang, who loved to whine about how everyone in his life had betrayed him, had slept with his wife, stolen his children, and stabbed him in the back.

He’s seen it since the beginning, seen the interest that Aang had taken in Ursa, but he didn’t think he’d actually do it. He should’ve made Aang more afraid — no, he should’ve made everyone more afraid.

There’s not much he has to say to the bounty hunter he’s hired. “Bring my wife and children back. Kill the airbenders.”

Ursa will face justice. She cannot be forgiven. And he needs the children back, or else he doesn’t have an heir to the throne. Lu Ten is a last resort — as much as he’s relied on Iroh for support, his brother had too often sided with Aang when it came to their disputes. No doubt Lu Ten takes after his father. He needs Azula and her ruthless cunning.

The hunter bows, and Ozai wonders how anyone will be able to respect him after this. But a plan is forming, the gears clicking into place. Deportation is not the answer he’s looking for. The Earth Kingdom doesn’t want to take in any more immigrants, and the new bureau is rounding them up faster than they can get rid of them.

He should’ve known. He should’ve known that this was the solution he needed all along.


	4. Air

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> heads up because this is going exactly where you think it is considering how that last chapter closed off (with the implication that ozai’s bouta commit genocide). there’s also some very dubious incest towards the end.

CHAPTER 4: Air

Aang and Ursa waste no time leaving the Fire Nation. It’s easy enough to trick the kids and the servants into thinking that they’ve decided to go on vacation a month early, that Ozai is still dealing with important business, so he’ll be joining them later. From there, they hire a fishing boat to take them out of the country. 

Aang figures that it’s Ozai’s pride that’s allowed them to get this far. The fire lord isn’t about to announce to his subjects that his family is fleeing him.

After an hour at sea, Zuko and Azula grow suspicious. “When are we going back? I’m tired,” Zuko yawns.

“This is boring,” Azula complains.

Ursa sits them down on the deck. The sky is growing dark with twilight, and all around them is ocean. Ember Island has long since vanished over the horizon. “We’re staying somewhere else for a while,” she says. “Father might hurt your baby brother, so we have to go someplace safe until he calms down.”

“Yeah, so? He won’t hurt me.” Azula crosses her arms and pouts.

“It’s because Zaru’s an airbender, isn’t it?” Zuko asks quietly.

“I know Dad wanted a firebender, but an airbender’s not so bad. I don’t get why it’s such a big deal. Plus, he already has us.”

Aang and Ursa exchange glances. “Do you want to explain…?” he whispers. Zuko seems to understand, but Azula will keep asking questions until she gets an answer.

“Give them the talk?” Ursa responds.

“Maybe not now.”

“What talk?” Azula interrupts.

“You’ll understand when you’re older,” Aang says dismissively. “Right now, we have more important things to worry about.”

“How long until we go back?” Zuko asks.

She shakes her head. “We’re not sure, honey.”

Early the next morning, they sneak out to talk alone on the deck while the kids are still asleep. 

“What are we going to do?” Ursa asks him. They’d known since the beginning that Zaru was Aang’s. Ursa had just hoped that they could pass him off as Ozai’s if he turned out to be a nonbender, or a firebender, while Aang had known that he wouldn’t be tolerated in the Fire Nation much longer, that this day would come eventually. He just wishes he’d had more time to prepare.

“We can’t go back,” Aang says. “He’ll kill us.”

She stares over the railing at into the water below, her eyes dull and tired. None of them had slept well in the cabin; Zuko and Azula had been fighting over space and blankets, and Zaru had been crying on and off all night. “I hate to suggest it, but what if we sent home Zuko and Azula, and in exchange, he left us alone?” she puts forth.

“Do you really want him to have full control over them? They don’t have their own beliefs yet. If he gets ahold of them and shoves his firebender superiority garbage down their throats, they’ll turn out to be just as hateful as he is.” Aang tugs at his hair. He’s had it for over two decades now, he’s even grown it out and worn a topknot to fit in with Fire Nation nobility. So that they see him not as a threat, but as one of them. He hates how much he’s assimilated over the years. The first thing he’ll do when there’s the time is cut it all off. And he’ll raise his son as an airbender, too.

“They’d have their uncle with them, at least,” Ursa says. “It could be worse.”

He glances at her, sees her gaze slide up to the horizon.

“If you could go back, would you want to?” he asks.

She takes a moment to think about it. “No,” she answers plainly. He loops an arm around her waist, and nuzzles into her neck. “All the warnings were there. We didn’t take them seriously enough. And now I’m afraid that he’s about to do something drastic.”

“It’s not our problem anymore,” Aang says. The call to disappear into the world as a nobody screams up from his gut, louder than ever. Only this time, he won’t be so lonely. He’s told Ursa about all the times that he’s stepped up to his duty, only for it to go wrong, for people to hate him for it, for someone to betray him. And it’s true again. “The Fire Nation hates me. I’ve done all I can, but they’ve turned on me because no matter how hard I try, I’ll never be one of them.”

She kisses the top of his head, and he feels safe for the first time in months, maybe years. Hope blooms in his chest when a strip of land appears on the horizon and her arms squeeze tight around him.

“Hey,” he asks, “when we get to the Earth Kingdom, do you want to get married?”

—

“I have a new plan,” Ozai says. The curtains are drawn, casting the room in shadow. The sliver of light from outside illuminates Iroh’s face, but leaves Ozai’s in darkness. It’s just like how it was years ago, when Ozai had confronted his brother about his desire to be crown prince. 

But this time, he has the upper hand.

Iroh’s expression doesn’t change. He could be very dangerous if he were to ever turn on Ozai, far more dangerous than Aang at this point. Certainly, he gives good advice sometimes, but Ozai is lucky that his brother’s main ambition is to run his tea shop in Caldera.

“If you refuse, I’ll have you taken off the council,” he threatens. He doesn’t add the part about how he won’t hesitate to lock Iroh in the dungeons if he continues to show sympathy towards Aang, and that his agents will be keeping an eye on him no matter what happens.

Iroh, as always, cannot be intimidated, and it frustrates Ozai to no end. “I’m listening” is all he says.

“The deportations are taking too long,” he says. “Our holding camps are close to their maximum capacities. Something must be done to create more room.”

“Brother, I hope you don’t mean what you’re saying,” Iroh says. “I thought you had long since denounced our grandfather’s abhorrent actions against the airbenders.”

“This is not the same,” Ozai snarls. “The airbenders were a peaceful people who kept to themselves.” It’s a shame that the most meddlesome one happened to be the only survivor, he thinks to himself. “These people — these half-breeds and invaders have no culture and no nation of their own, so they taint ours. We lose nothing of value if we eliminate them.”

“We do lose value if we eliminate them,” Iroh insists. He can practically see the wheels turning in his head as he thinks of some sort of compromise that will please Ozai. “We lose their labor-power. We can send them to work in the factories and at other menial jobs so that while they wait to be deported, they can contribute something to our nation instead of taking from it.”

He considers it. It’s not a bad idea, but he’s unsure how they would implement it without moving the prisoners out of the camps. “Perhaps we could. Have a more detailed plan ready for the meeting tomorrow. I’m willing to hear this out.”

—

It’s Aang’s first time back in the Earth Kingdom since he helped Ozai take Ba Sing Se. Even as things decline in the Fire Nation, he’s happy to see that things are relatively peaceful here. Of course, there are still problems — they still see poverty in the rural areas through which they pass, and organized crime in the cities, but the formerly omnipresent soldiers and the constant talk of war are gone.

They spend a few weeks on the road, scoping out a place to live. The children are unhappy, crying for things to go back to normal, but they have no choice but to push onward. Azula runs off on one occasion, and after a few hours of panic, they find her trying to steal a boat to cross a river. 

Concealing their identities is also a challenge. Aang’s had plenty of practice staying under the radar, but Azula especially doesn’t understand their situation — or if she does, she refuses to accept it. It’s a struggle to keep her quiet, and she throws fits at any threat of punishment. 

Aang loves his new family, but spending days traveling and nights in dirty, cramped hotel rooms wears his patience thin. But no matter how much they annoy him, or what they do, he will not treat them the way Ozai did.

They run into another refugee family on their way to Omashu. They’ve heard that the city is still accepting Fire Nation deportees, and that it’s one of the safest places to live. The firebender man, Huashi, and his earthbending wife and daughter had fled the Fire Nation before they could be deported by the government.

“I don’t know what they do with all those people they round up,” Huashi confides in Aang and Ursa once all the kids are asleep. They’ve been traveling together for the last few days, staying in the same inns. “We weren’t about to stick around and find out.”

“We’ve run into other deportees,” Aang says defensively. “They’re sending them here.”

“The Earth Kingdom stopped letting in Fire Nation boats. When they can’t get in, they just throw all the passengers overboard,” Yen, Huashi’s wife, adds. “Then they report back to the Deportation Bureau and say that everything went as planned.”

“That can’t be true,” Aang scoffs. “It must be a rumor.” Fear and horror twist in his gut at this monstrous thing he’s helped create.

“No, it’s real, all right. We saw it happen,” Huashi says, shaking his head sadly. “Me and Yen, we swam out and tried to save whoever we could. But most of them didn’t make it to shore.”

A lump forms in his throat, and he can’t speak. “That’s horrible,” Ursa says, but he barely hears her over the guilt and dread roaring in his ears.

Omashu welcomes them, even if the cities on the coast don’t. He’d been here when he was young, back before the war, and it doesn’t look all of that different from how he remembers it. They find a house on the lower side of town, which definitely couldn’t be called luxurious, but he’s just happy that Zuko and Azula finally have separate rooms. He honestly doesn’t know how much longer he could’ve gone sharing a bed with them.

They settle into a new rhythm quickly. Zuko enrolls in school; it doesn’t exactly compare to the high-quality education that he received at the palace, but it keeps him busy. They hire a tutor to come to the house for Azula because she still can’t be trusted not to talk about her true identity. It’s a hassle to have her at home all the time, but she befriends Huashi and Yen’s daughter, Mila, and spends a lot of time at their house. Their fellow refugees live just down the street, and in fact, the whole district has a high immigrant population.

With their funds running low, Aang sets out to find a job, and runs into someone who’s quite happy to see him. “Wan? Is that you? I thought you vanished off the face of the earth! What are you doing here?” the cabbage merchant at the market gasps.

“Hey, Bao.” He smiles even though his days working the cabbage stand were among his darkest and loneliest, and culminated in losing Appa. That’s no fault of Bao’s, though. “My family just moved in, and I’m looking for a job. What do you say? Will you hire me again?”

“Of course! You were always my favorite employee. Well, besides Ta Shang… and Gitu, now that I think about it…” He rattles off about a half dozen more names. “…but I’d be happy to have you on board again! I’m afraid it would have to be a part time gig, though.”

Aang won’t be able to support his family on a part-time job, but he’ll take it until another opportunity arises. And a few months later, it does, just when their savings are about to run dry. He’s heard about the king of Omashu, and how he shares the same name with an old friend from Aang’s childhood. It crosses his mind that they might be the same person, but he dismisses it. Bumi must be long-dead by now; maybe it’s his son or grandson, or someone totally unrelated.

On an errand to make a delivery to the castle, he comes face to face with the king, and discovers that he is, indeed, the same Bumi he’d known as a boy.

“Long time, no see, hmm?” the king asks, and laughs his strange snorting laugh. “My, my, how did you stay so young?”

They spend the afternoon catching up, and Bumi offers him a job in the castle. He almost declines considering how his last advising gig went, but he needs the money. He explains to Bumi that he’s hiding from the Fire Nation, and Bumi promises that he’ll always have sanctuary in Omashu.

“Just one more thing,” Bumi says. “I’ll only give you the job if you can first…” He bends twin pillars of stone up through the floor. “…defeat me in combat!”

Aang grins. “You’re on, old man!”

Bumi is in fantastic shape, and it’s easy to forget his age. Their spar lasts for hours, until, sweating and panting, they arrive at a stalemate. It’s the most fun he’s had in a long time, and Bumi gives him the position. The king may be a little strange, but this isn’t the uneasy alliance he’d had with Ozai. He’s much more confident that he can make this work.

Bao isn’t happy that Aang has to quit already, though. “My wife said she wants to take a part-time job once our youngest starts school,” Aang says, grimacing and hoping Bao won’t take the news too badly. “Though that’s still three or four years away… Maybe you could hire my stepson?”

And so Zuko starts working for the cabbage merchant for just a few hours a week, after school some days, and Aang earns enough money under Bumi that he’s able to give Ursa the romantic wedding she deserves. They marry in the castle, surrounded by their new friends, and the reception lasts well into the night.

It’s the happiest he can remember being. He could have the perfect life here, but Huashi and Yen’s warnings still nag at his conscience. But what can he possibly do about the atrocities the Deportation Bureau may very well be committing halfway across the world? Is there even a way to intervene, to fix things? He can’t return to the Fire Nation without being killed, he can’t leave his family alone. He comforts himself with the thought that Ozai will eventually run out of people to deport, or maybe he’ll realize that it’s not actually achieving anything and stop.

And he knows Ozai well enough to see that they’re both fooling themselves.

—

Six months. No sign of Aang or his family, and little word from the bounty hunter. Ozai is beginning to think that the hired hitman took the money and ran because he has no respect for his fire lord. Because he knows the truth behind Aang’s disappearance, and he knows that Ozai can be fooled.

The narrative Ozai has released to the public is different, one that bolsters his claims about foreigners. He told them that he’d listened to the will of the people, to the voices calling for Aang’s deportation, but the avatar hadn’t taken the news well, and had kidnapped his family in retaliation.

That is the story most people know. It’s the one Lu Ten knows.

“You wanted to see me, Uncle?” The young man doesn’t spend much time in the palace; he lives in Caldera and splits his working hours between the private and public sector, managing Iroh’s tea shop and helping to run the Ministry of Justice. He’s a bit soft like his father, but Ozai thinks he may be able to fix that.

“Yes, I did,” he says. “As I’m sure you’ve realized by now, if my children aren’t found, that puts you next in line for the throne.” Ozai has sent a second bounty hunter out not only to recover his family and bring justice to Aang and Ursa, but to apprehend the first. But it can’t hurt to cover all his bases.

“Yes, I know.” Lu Ten bows his head.

“And this is a position you’re willing to step up to if need be, unlike your father?”

“I am more than willing. It would be the highest honor to lead my country. I can only hope it doesn’t come to that.”

Ozai’s agents tell him that Iroh and Lu Ten aren’t conspiring against him, but in an ideal situation, he’d still purge the both of them. And banishing Iroh alone will only turn Lu Ten against him, who seems fairly harmless on his own.

The least he can do is separate them.

His lips curve into a forced smile. “How good to hear. If you desire to become fire lord one day, however, more experience in government will be of use. I know you enjoy working at the tea shop, but the Minister of Justice is retiring soon, and I’d like you to take over his position.”

“As you wish, Uncle.” He bows, and Ozai dismisses him. What a pliant young man, he thinks, but he remembers that he had once put up the same facade of obedience.

“Keep an eye on him as well,” he tells the guard at his right hand. He’s made the mistake of underestimating one so-called ally before, and it won’t happen again.

—

“You don’t need to walk me to school,” Azula protests.

“It’s your first day,” Aang says. “I want to make sure you get to the right room.”

“Why can’t Zuko take me?” She grumbles, “I’d rather be around him than you.”

She’s in a horrible mood, even worse than usual. She’d been almost impossible to drag out of bed this morning, and she’d thrown a fit about losing her tutor and having to attend school “like a regular peasant.” It’s a wonder she’s even walking with him, even if she’s mouthing off.

“Zuko’s class starts earlier than yours,” he reminds her, ignoring her scathing comment. She stops walking, arms crossed over her chest, and Aang sighs. He needs to get her moving again so they won’t be late, so he says, “Mom and I want you to make more friends, too. It’s great that you and Mila get along so well, but you’ll meet lots of other kids at school. It’ll be fun.”

“There you go doing it again,” she scoffs.

“What did I do?”

“You always say ‘Mom and I’ this and ‘Mom and I’ that. You’re not my dad! I liked you better when you were just my uncle.”

A scandalized passerby shoots Aang a dirty look, and he kneels down to her level. “Sweetie, not here—”

“You took everything from me, and now you’re making me go to school! I’m not a regular peasant.”

He grabs her arm and drags her off to a side street where they can talk in private. He’s lucky she doesn’t firebend at him, just struggles in his grasp and stands there pouting once he releases her.

“I know this is hard to hear,” he says, “but your father isn’t a very nice man. He wants to hurt people like Zaru and Mila just because they’re not firebenders. Listen, you don’t have to call me ‘Dad’ if you don’t want to. But I’m married to your mother now, and you’re just going to have to accept that.”

“Yeah, well, you’re not very nice either. Mila’s parents told her what sex is, and I know you were doing it with Mom while she was still married to Dad, and that’s why Zaru is an airbender.”

“Okay, that’s out of line,” he says firmly, and reaches for her hand. “Come on. We’re going to school now.”

“No, we’re not.” She smirks, and the expression makes her look terrifyingly like her father. “I’m telling the whole school that I’m the princess unless I get my tutor back.”

He shuts his eyes and searches deep inside himself for the self-control not to yell at her. “I’ll see what I can do.”

Ursa is surprised to see them back so early, and as calmly as he can, Aang explains Azula’s demands. “She’s out of control,” he says. He knows how Ozai would address this issue — with disciplinary punishment. And maybe some discipline isn’t such a bad idea, but they need something else.

“There’s something wrong with that child,” Ursa sighs, defeated. Her hair, streaked with gray, is coming loose from its bun. Aang draws her into an embrace, smoothing the frizz.

“Tang opened up that therapy practice last month,” he suggests.

“Oh please, that old crackpot?” Ursa scoffs. “You’ve got to be kidding.” 

“Bao’s been going there to work on his anger management, and Zuko tells me he didn’t even scream when the cart tipped over yesterday. So I’d say he’s doing something right.”

They glance into the other room to see Azula setting fire to Zaru’s favorite stuffed animal. An instant later, the boy’s piercing cries shake the house to its foundations.

Ursa changes her mind. “You know what? It’s worth a try.”

Unsurprisingly, Azula is resistant to therapy. They finally get her to attend a session by promising her a ride on the city’s delivery system. Aang trusts their neighbor Tang, but he remembers that he’d trusted Kona in the beginning, too. He spends their sessions waiting outside the office and listening for any sounds of distress.

In time, Azula opens up to Tang, and then to him and Ursa as well, their communication calmer and more open. There’s still something wrong with her — a jarringly cruel comment here, a violent outburst there — but it’s muted, subdued. He can’t expect children, or anyone, really, to be perfect anyway.

She still misses her old life, and he can’t blame her for that either. But they have connections in high places here as well. They send her back to school, and with Mila’s help and the aid of her impressive firebending, she draws attention, admiration, and then friendship from her classmates. As per Tang’s suggestion, Azula channels her frustrations and negativity into bending. Back at the palace, she and Aang had bonded over practice, and they still do in Omashu. It’s always been his main way of connecting with her.

“I’m bored of firebreathing. I know it already. What’s the most advanced thing you know?” Azula asks. Their local gymnasium is designed for earthbending, like the others all around the city, but it’s also a great place for firebending. There’s nothing flammable here, unlike that time in the backyard…

“Oh, I don’t know about that,” Aang says. The scorched ground burns his bare feet, and he wipes away the sweat beading on his forehead. “You’ve got a long way to go before I can teach you lightningbending. You’re sure you wouldn’t rather learn how do a fire jetpack?” He demonstrates, and the shooting flame from his hands and feet propels him into the air.

“Cool. But maybe next time,” she says matter-of-factly. “I could figure that out myself if I really wanted. But I don’t know how to make lightning.”

“Well, this is something that your father taught me. I might be the only person outside the royal family who knows how to do this.”

He spots the flicker of resentment in her eyes. She still doesn’t fully trust him for betraying Ozai, and he doesn’t regret the betrayal itself, but rather the way it had happened.

“You need peace of mind before you can bend lightning,” he continues, biting back a comment about how Ozai’s mind is the farthest thing from peaceful there is. “I don’t mean that you have to be trouble-free and happy, but you do need a clear head, free of distraction.”

“Come on Uncle, don’t make me meditate again!” she whines. “It’s so boring.”

“I already know you’re capable of great focus. I see it when you practice all the time.” He shows her the form, tells her to let the energy flow through her body. She squints her eyes in concentration — an expression that Aang thinks is very cute — and follows his motions. She doesn’t get frustrated when she can only generate flame, just persists silently and steadily, adjusting her form to his gentle corrections. (Even with all her behavioral problems, she’s much easier to teach than the impatient Zuko.)

An hour later, he’s about to tell her that they need to head home when she gasps. He hears a crackle and jumps to attention to see electricity dancing in her palm. “I did it! I did it!” she cries, and in her excitement, loses the charge. “Did you see that?”

“Yes! You did it!” He wants to pick her up and swing her around, but she’s gotten too big for that. “Can you do it again?”

In an instant, she’s refocused. She doesn’t quite manage to make lightning that day, but she can shoot little bursts of electricity from her fingers. Undoubtedly, she’ll be showing it off at school tomorrow. He sternly warns her not to zap anyone, and not to use her powers around water, or it could be very dangerous.

“One thing I don’t get,” she says as they walk home, “is you said that only royalty knows lightningbending. I thought you didn’t want me to be a royal.”

“I know you miss how things were before, and that’s okay. I understand,” he says. “I just wanted to give you something from both me and your father. Even if he and I didn’t get along, I don’t want that to get in the way of how you feel about him.”“Oh.” Her voice is quiet.

“You can honor your past and your heritage while also trying to move forward,” he says, not sure if he’s talking entirely to her, or to himself — because spirits know he hasn’t honored his past — or to some sort of imaginary apparition of Ozai. “It’s part of who you are, and in an ideal situation, I’d never want you to repress that. But this isn’t ideal.”

Her little arms wrap around him, and they’re gone before he can register that she’s hugged him. “Thanks for the lesson, Uncle,” she says, and starts running off. “I think Zuzu is in for… a bit of a shock!”

“Azula, no!” He chases after her. “I just told you not to zap anyone!”

—

“Fire Lord Ozai!” Zhao greets him with a hearty wave, and Ozai suddenly feels sick to his stomach. They’ve exchanged correspondence, but haven’t spoken in person since Zhao’s failed mission to recover Cai from Ba Sing Se — the mission that had left him paralyzed from the waist down.

He forces a smile to his face. “Captain Zhao. So pleasant to see you again.”

“No need to fake it with me. I can see that you’re unnerved by the wheelchair.” He gestures, as if pushing the thought away. “Here to bring me out of retirement and send me on a mission that’ll cost me my arms next?” He laughs uproariously at Ozai’s horrified expression. “It’s a joke. So why did you want to see me after all this time?”

Ozai’s reasons feel very stupid in light of Zhao’s condition. He’s been lonely without his family; it’s something he’ll admit to himself but won’t say out loud. There are any number of women willing to throw themselves at him, but he misses having a bond with his sexual partners. His and Zhao’s bond hadn’t necessarily been emotional, but they’d been brothers in arms, they’d bled and suffered together.

“I thought we could catch up,” he replies simply. Had he really been about to ask a crippled man to sleep with him so he could forget about all his problems? “I presume you’ve already been offered a drink?”

“Yes, I’m fine, thanks.” He clears his throat, and wheels himself closer to Ozai, who’s unwilling to approach him, as if paralysis is contagious. “I heard about your family. My deepest condolences. What a backstabbing bastard that avatar is. And after everything you’ve done for him. I hope he gets what’s coming.”

“I have a bounty hunter on it,” he says, and clasps his hands behind his back. “How have you been, Zhao?”

“I’ve been well. I’m living in Lei Ping now with my partner. We run a business together making ceramics and such. It’s not the life of glory you and I saw on the battlefield, but it’s rewarding work.”

“You, a craftsman? I never would’ve guessed,” he says, raising an eyebrow.

“You know better than anyone how good I am with my hands.” He playfully nudges Ozai in the ribs, then reaches over to pull something from the bag on his lap. “Here. We made this for you.” Zhao holds out a vase the colors of flame, all orange and yellow and white hot. On the body is a carving of a battle scene, a troop of firebenders driving back opposing earthbenders.

“This is… beautiful,” he says, genuinely impressed by the skill of the labor put into the vase. He turns it over in his hands. “You made this?”

“My partner makes them, and I do the decorating. How’s that for the cultural revival you keep on talking about?”

“Thank you, Captain. It’ll be a fine addition to the collection,” he says. Other subjects have been known to gift the royal family artwork, and he has a wing of the palace dedicated to their contributions. “Who is this partner you speak of?”

“Ah,” Zhao laughs. “I wish I could tell you that our meeting was the romantic union of the ages, but the truth is that I was horribly depressed after losing my legs, and I got roaring drunk at the tavern. I tried to walk again, and he was the one who picked me up after I fell on my face.”

Ozai raises an eyebrow. He’d hoped that “partner” had simply meant that they did business together. “‘He?’” he echoes.

“Oh, please. Don’t act so surprised. You know I don’t like to limit my options. Though,” he concedes, “we’re more or less a married couple in all but name.”

He’d known Zhao had had feelings for him, but for two men to live together, to act like husband and wife, isn’t even something that’s occurred to him. And maybe, just maybe, considering his original plan for their meeting, he’s a little hurt that Zhao has moved on with his life. And he’s unsure if this hurt comes from a desire for his subordinates to worship him, or if it’s specific to Zhao.

“You aren’t planning on deporting people like us, too, are you?” Zhao’s joy at their reunion fades. A hint of fear seeps into his tentative voice. “You did all those things for women not so long ago. Maybe you could do something for us too.”

“I’ll consider it,” Ozai says. Marriage is off the table, and while law enforcement usually turns a blind eye to it, homosexual intercourse is technically illegal. He supposes it couldn’t hurt to change that.

“I know you pity me because I’m stuck in this wheelchair. I can see it in the way you look at me. Promise me you won’t purge the cripples either, Ozai,” Zhao pleads. “I hear how you talk about people leeching off society without giving anything back. I’ve got my business, but some others like me aren’t lucky or charming enough to have a master potter fall for him. You won’t do it, will you?”

Absently running his fingertips over the texture of the vase, he swallows past the lump in his throat. “I won’t, Zhao.”

—

When the black figure slips into his room through the window, Aang thinks it’s a dream. 

He doesn’t think it’s a dream when he hears the scream coming from Zaru’s room.

When he bursts through the door, the silhouette of the masked man has Zaru in a chokehold. “Give me the other two or he gets it,” the intruder snarls, the flame in his palm dangerously close to the boy’s face.

“Let go of him right now!” Aang demands. Zaru cries and writhes in his grip, unable to understand what’s going on.

Mara’s voice bubbles up from deep within his subconscious, and he doesn’t wait for her to finish asking him the question before he’s doing it. The earthen walls reach out to grab the intruder’s arms, but he’s too quick. Fire roars past Aang’s ear, and Zaru is screaming, and the rest of the family is shouting and storming up behind him, and then Aang is bending the breath from the man’s lungs, bending it with a fury he hadn’t even know was possible.

The intruder lashes out with waves of fire even as Aang sucks away his air supply, and Aang puts himself between the man and Zaru. His skin sears and crackles, but he bends the breath, he keeps going, and he doesn’t stop until the intruder moves no more.

Ursa, Zuko, and Azula are standing behind him, horrified. “Zaru,” Aang pants. “Is Zaru all right?” Ursa picks up the boy and cradles him to her chest. It’s hard to tell in the dark of the night, but from what he can see, Zaru looks uninjured, just badly shaken.

“You’re burnt,” Zuko points out. Aang glances down to see that the top layer of the skin on his arm has peeled away, revealing a mess of raw, red blisters.

“Did you kill him, Uncle?” Azula wonders, eyeing the motionless body in the corner of the room. “Does this mean we have to move again?”

Right now, it’s the least of his worries whether the intruder is dead or just unconscious. “Someone get me water,” he says. His arm throbs, and he won’t be able to think clearly until the pain is gone. Zuko runs off to do as he’s told, and he calls out after him, “And be careful!”

When Zuko returns, he bends the water onto his burn. He’s still not much of a healer, but it takes the edge off and closes up the wound.

“I’ll talk to King Bumi tomorrow about security tomorrow,” he says. “I want us to stay here, but that might not be an option.” 

“No one’s going anywhere by themselves until we figure something out,” Ursa adds. “There could be more of them.”

He sits there thinking, holding the mass of water of his arm. Where could they go? Ba Sing Se? It’s too obvious, and Ozai’s already found him there once, and not even on purpose. The Air Temples, also, are too obvious. The rest of the Earth Kingdom? The Water Tribes? He doesn’t want to invite trouble to innocent people.

The commotion has attracted the attention of the neighbors. “Everything all right over there?” Huashi calls through the window.

“It is now,” Aang answers. The intruder doesn’t stir. Soon, Bumi’s royal guard should be here to ask questions.

“Kids, why don’t you go with Huashi and Yen?” Ursa suggests, and the three depart wordlessly. Zaru is still sobbing and reluctant to let go of his mother, but he clings to Zuko’s leg as soon as he’s set down.

“I think he’s dead,” Aang says. He doesn’t see the rise and fall of the man’s chest or hear his breathing. “I think I killed him.”

It’s like Kona all over again. Mercy killings aside, he’s taken two lives now. Only this one doesn’t feel so wrong. He did what he had to do to protect his family. His only son.

“Ozai will be wondering why he hasn’t received word back from his assassin,” Ursa remarks.

“He’ll send another. He’ll send stronger ones.” He runs his hand over the newly healed skin on his arm, the last of the water gone.

“How many can he send before it’s considered an act of war?”

A cold trickle of fear runs down Aang’s spine. How could he be so selfish? How could he be so selfish as to put everyone’s lives at risk just because he refuses submit himself to the powers that be? How could he be so selfish as to murder a man who had just been hired to do a job? There had been another way, but he’d gotten so caught up in it, so caught up in the rage and the fury that he’d lost track of himself again.

“And it’s not a war that Omashu can win, at least not without the help of the rest of the Earth Kingdom. And I doubt they’re willing to fight again,” Ursa continues. “He has to be overthrown.”

Aang abruptly jumps to his feet. “How? How do you expect me to do that? We did everything we could to put him on the throne in the first place! And we ruined it all because we were selfish.”

So selfish. So selfish of them to think they could sneak around behind Ozai’s back forever.

“What if we played his little game? What if we hired an assassin too?”

“Are you insane?” he gasps. “We can’t.”

“And why not?”

“I won’t kill again.”

She glares. It’s the angriest he’s seen her. “If you think of a better idea — something that will keep us all safe — then let me know. Otherwise, this will keep happening, and one day it’ll end up with Zuko and Azula back and in their father’s custody and the rest of us dead.”

He tries to speak, to counter her, but all that comes out is sputtering.

“Choose your side, Aang,” Ursa says. “I’ve chosen mine.”

—

The setup of the labor camps had all gone as planned. The earthbenders are off the coast on metal ships, and the nonbenders and firebenders with tainted blood are on dry land, manning the factories. The massive increase in cheap labor has put some honest, hardworking firebenders out of a job, but Ozai is willing to compensate them until they get back on their feet. The economy booms, and revenue flows into the government and back into the hands of the people.

The setup of the labor camps had all gone as planned, but for one thing. A waterbender had gotten mixed in with the nonbenders. Waterbenders were an extraordinarily rare catch for the Deportation Bureau, like digging through dirt and hitting shit instead. This one had been devious and cunning.

“We don’t know how she did it, my lord,” the guard stammers. “It was like some sort of witchcraft. Like mind control. We couldn’t fight it.”

The camp is marked with signs of struggle everywhere — debris and broken bodies trampled into the mud, the living quarters vandalized, the factories torn down. “You mean to tell me that your entire team was defeated by an unarmed group of nonbenders and one elderly waterbender?” he barks.

“Well… yes, that’s what happened.”

“You’re all fired,” he tells the guard, and turns to the man at his right hand. “Minister, I want every one of these escapees rounded up and killed as quickly as possible. Send word out to the nearby towns that there is a curfew tonight thanks to the incompetence of these guards. Have whoever was responsible for this mistake apprehended, and if you find anymore waterbenders, kill them on sight. They’re clearly too dangerous to be left alive if all of our camp guards are of such abysmal quality as these ones.”

“Yes, my lord,” the deportation minister says. 

Change is coming.

—

It turns out that Bumi has some space for them in the castle. The security is a major upgrade from their old house, with guards working around the clock. They’re all glad to be living somewhere a little more luxurious, in a place that reminds them of home, even if it means leaving their old neighbors behind… and the kids sharing a room again. Going into the city from the castle makes them nervous, as there’s always a chance for them to be ambushed.

The day after they move in, Aang finds Zuko sitting cross-legged on the floor, staring at Bumi’s throne. The king is off elsewhere, probably playing with his pet rabbit or sparring with the guards, or maybe even doing his kingly duties, so the throne room is empty.

“Something wrong?” Aang asks, eschewing a chair and sitting on the floor next to him. “Still shook up about the other day?”

He shrugs, his eyes still fixed on the throne.

“You can talk to me,” Aang assures him.

“I wanted to go home,” Zuko admits. “Not with the guy who tried to kill you and Zaru. But I was going to be the next fire lord.” He glowers, lips curled downward. “That was my birthright. Father would’ve given it to Azula. I know he would have.”

Aang recalls the conversation from two nights ago, when Ursa had tried to convince him that they needed to overthrow Ozai. “One day we’ll go back,” he says. “And that’ll still be your right.”

But maybe it shouldn’t be. Maybe the whole system has to go. They could topple the dynasty, bring crashing to the ground this broken power structure based on the supremacy of the Fire Nation and the abuse of authority. But what Aang has right here is the next heir, and the ability to mold his young mind to his will—

No. Aang has spent too much time around Ozai. He has subjected himself to the same indoctrination as any firebender just because he had wanted so badly to believe that he’d made the right choice when he’d decided to help him. He cannot force Zuko to take on his beliefs, only encourage him to consider a more balanced perspective.

And look how well that had worked out with Ozai.

“But when?” Zuko implores. “You always say we’ll go back, but when?” His voice softens. “It’s not that it’s bad here. It just isn’t where I belong.”

“If you were fire lord,” Aang asks, “what would you do?”

“I guess I would continue what my father is doing,” he says. “I don’t think other types of benders are animals like he says—”

“He said what?” Aang interrupts, affronted. But it really shouldn’t come as a surprise.

“Oh, sorry,” Zuko says. He winces and tries to hide his embarrassment by turning away. “Of course he wouldn’t say that to you.”

“It’s fine. Go on.”

“I like other types of benders, like my earthbender friends. And I like you, and Zaru.” He says it like it’s shameful to admit. “But if all the firebenders want the foreigners to leave, it would make me a bad fire lord not to listen to them.”

Aang appreciates his sentiment. “You have to understand,” he says, “the Fire Nation didn’t care about foreigners in their country until your father started talking about them. You were too young to remember the war, but the Fire Nation was trying to conquer the world, not shut itself off from it. You had colonies in the Earth Kingdom.”

“So I can change people’s minds if I’m fire lord,” Zuko says.

“Maybe.”

He knows it’s naive to think that Zuko can undo nearly a century of hatred. But what else is worth believing in?

“Will King Bumi be mad if I sit on his throne?” Zuko asks.

“He won’t mind,” Aang assures him.

“Are you sure?” His expression is hesitant and wary. Aang’s seen the way Ozai punishes his children for any minor transgression, and those years of learning to be afraid still inhibit Zuko.

“Go ahead. If he gets upset, which he won’t, I’ll tell him it was my idea.”

Zuko climbs to his feet and approaches the chair, studying it before he sits down. Then he leans back and sprawls out like it belongs to him.

“How does it feel?” Aang asks.

“Powerful,” Zuko breathes. Twin flames ignite in his palms, and Aang guesses that he’s trying to simulate bed of fire surrounding the fire lord’s throne.

“Your father never let you sit in the throne at home?”

“Of course not,” Zuko says like it’s the most obvious thing ever. “I’m not the fire lord.”

“He probably doesn’t want the power going to your head,” Aang remarks.

“You there!” Zuko barks, pointing to an imaginary person in the corner of the room. “You’ve been accused of saying something mean about me behind my back!”

“But your highness!” Aang protests. “I would never!”

“You said I was a bad firebender!” Zuko cries. His example stings at Aang; he knows how critical Ozai is of his children’s abilities. No doubt he’s given Zuko this exact, blunt criticism. “How could you disrespect me like this!”

“That’s not true! You’re the best one there is, my lord! Even the mightiest dragon could never hope to stand up to your greatness!”

“My witness tells me you said otherwise. Your sentence is… banishment!”

“No! I have a wife and kids! Who will take care of them if I’m gone?”

“Then they’re banished too! Good luck in the Earth Kingdom, living among earthbenders. Those dirt-loving savages!” Zuko snaps out of the act, looking around frantically to make sure no one else had been around to hear him call earthbenders dirt-loving savages.

“I hope you’re a much nicer fire lord than that,” Aang laughs.

“Me too.” He slips off the throne. “It’s what my dad sounds like,” he mutters shyly. More firmly, he adds, “You’re right. I don’t want to be like him.”

Ozai had said the same of his own father. But with Zuko, he has hope. There’s time to set him right. To make sure he grows up to be empathetic towards all people, to love unconditionally. And the best Aang can do is guide him.

“You’ll be home before you know it,” Aang says, thumping him on the back. “Promise.”

When Zuko asks, “What about you?” he pretends not to hear.

—

Iroh rages into the throne room, storms straight up to Ozai, and slaps a piece of parchment into his hand. “I refuse to be complicit in this anymore,” he says. The guards and nobles in the court stare.

Ozai picks up the crumpled sheet; it’s a report from the Deportation Bureau about the killings of the escaped prisoners. They’d been rounded up and burned alive in front of the villagers. It had been standard procedure before Sozin’s time — nothing wrong with reviving a few old traditions. 

“Criminals receiving their due punishment? This is what offends you?” he nearly laughs, bemused.

“You have enslaved these people, and now you order their murder when they dare to seek their freedom? I have already been complicit in this genocide for too long! Consider this my resignation, brother.”

Ozai had known since the beginning that Iroh had only suggested the labor camps to prevent the alternative. The spies who’d been tailing him hadn’t picked up on any subversive activity, but he hadn’t needed their intel anyway. His hunch had been right.

“You dare disrespect me in my court?” he scoffs.

“Your obsession with purity has gone too far. All these people want is to share this land you love,” Iroh seethes.

He can’t remember the last time he’s seen Iroh this angry, and it’s hard to act like it’s not intimidating. “And I suppose while you’re here, you’ll tell me we should go back to war to share our greatness with subhumans who cannot appreciate it.”

“No! You are the one who wants to send us back to war: a war on our own people. These are men, women, and children with families and friends who care about them.” Smoke rises from Iroh’s clenched fists.

“They are not our people — how generous of you to call them people at all.” Ozai waves him away, but a fear is brewing inside him. “Guards, get him out of my court.”

“I won’t be leaving. I am the rightful heir to this throne, and once I win it back from you, I will fix what you have broken,” he snarls. “Agni Kai.”

Ozai is taken aback by the challenge, and he sees a triumphant gleam in Iroh’s eyes as he recognizes Ozai’s fear. “There will be no Agni Kai,” he says as calmly as he can. His throat is dry. “I do not deign to fight traitors. Guards. Take him to the dungeon.”

Flames kindle to a roar in Iroh’s palms. The guards stop moving in, and the nobles scatter to the corners of the room. Ozai sheds his bulky robes. How hard a fight can this be? He is still young and fit, while Iroh is past his prime. 

They both strike at once. Fire crackles and dances, scorching the floor. The heat is like a furnace, raging and burning as they trade blows through the curtains and waves of flame. Ozai carves his way through the wall of fire and delivers a lightning bolt straight to Iroh’s chest, only for his brother to absorb and redirect it back at him in a move that shouldn’t even be possible.

Ozai rolls out of the way as the floor explodes. Burning stone flies across the room, and he holds up an arm to shield himself. If he were a lesser man, the maneuver would’ve distracted him and cost him the duel, but he is a master of his art.

Their battle rages out of the throne room and into the courtyard. Servants and visitors flee from the fight, diving for cover, while some of the other firebenders try to minimize damage to the palace when the flames spiral out of control. He just has to outlast Iroh, who, as he can see through the wash of orange, is growing tired and desperate. Knowing Ozai can’t block lightning, electricity hisses in Iroh’s palms as he winds up to deal the finishing blow, but Ozai is quicker. A concentrated beam of fire hits Iroh square in the chest, then he’s on the ground, rolling and struggling to put it out.

Then he’s still.

Ozai doubles over, spent. Sweat pours down his body, and he gasps for air. The burns on his legs sear, and he notices for the first time just how badly they hurt now that the adrenaline is dying down.

“My lord!” a guard cries, running up to him. “Are you all right?”

“The traitor is still alive,” another asks. “What shall we do with him?”

“As I said,” Ozai pants, “take him to the dungeon. Keep him alive… for now.”

That night, Lu Ten visits him in the infirmary, back from working late at the Ministry of Justice. “You wanted to see me, Uncle?” he asks, the same thing he always says when Ozai calls him. Such a polite boy. “Are you okay? What happened?”

“This will not be easy for you to hear, Nephew,” he sighs. The lie is too convenient for him not to tell it. “But I am not one for pleasantries. Your father attacked me in the middle of a meeting with my subjects, claiming that I had taken his rightful place as fire lord. I tried to talk him down, but unfortunately, I was forced to defend myself, and… he died during our duel.” 

Lu Ten’s face transforms; he’s still the spoiled, weak boy who Ozai had watched grow up. It takes a great deal of effort not to smirk when he continues, “Our relationship had always been rough, but I wish it could’ve ended differently. You must understand, however, that he was a traitor. As hard as this must be for you, it was for the best.”

Lu Ten stammers, struggling to find the words to express the shock and grief written all over his features.

“You didn’t know about this, did you? You didn’t know that he was planning treason?” Ozai asks. His agents haven’t picked up any signs of subversion from Lu Ten, but they hadn’t from Iroh, either. Most likely, he guesses, Iroh’s actions had been driven by emotion, a decision made in the spur of the moment.

“No, Uncle,” Lu Ten says, barely able to speak. “Of course not. I would never want this to happen.”

He’s barely more than a boy, and he proves it when he cries. And it’s not that Ozai has gotten better at comforting people over the years, it’s that he knows exactly what to say to get what he wants. “It’s all right. You have me now,” he whispers, and pulls Lu Ten against his chest as he whimpers and sobs. Ozai runs his fingers through his nephew’s hair, just the way the boy’s mother used to do. The sensation of the warm body against him reminds him painfully that he has only whores to fill his needs, that Zhao and Ursa are both lost to him. 

He presses a kiss to his cheek, one that lingers a little longer than it should. “You have me now,” he murmurs, his breath hot against Lu Ten’s skin. “And I’m all that you need.”

—

The Southern Air Temple. This place is tainted with the last time he had been here, when his worst fears had been confirmed. Despite his grief for his slaughtered people, Aang tries to keep happy childhood memories in the forefront of his mind. He needs to stay strong for Zaru.

The whole family, in addition to some of Bumi’s guards, comes with him to visit. It’s the most lively temple has been in nearly a century, yet there’s still so much Zaru has to miss out on. He will never know the joy of playing airball, or bonding with a sky bison, but it’s up to Aang to pick up the shattered pieces of his culture and pass them down. It’s his burden, and one day, Zaru will have to carry it for him.

Yet it’s a relief to finally share it. Zaru takes after him; he’s a fast, eager learner, begging Aang for more lessons even after they’re both tired. Even if he doesn’t get a sky bison companion, he befriends the flying lemurs at the temple, and they start following him around.

Zaru is less enthusiastic about meditation and other such aspects of their training, though. Aang wishes he could use the time to tap back into the spiritual part of himself, but instead, he spends it trying to get Zaru to sit still.

Back in Omashu, their training continues. Zuko and Azula are at first annoyed that Aang seems to be playing favorites with Zaru, but they’re getting to be the age where they’ve stopped craving adult approval at every turn and they want to be independent. He’s still close with them, of course, but they start spending more time with their friends than with him.

One more hitman comes for them, but Bumi’s guards thwart him before he has the chance to attack Aang and his family. He gets the sense that Ozai has given up on them, but it’s impossible to know. There’s no news from the Fire Nation, and the stream of deportees coming to Omashu has slowed to a trickle. He convinces himself that it’s because Ozai has already weeded out all the so-called undesirables. That Ozai has started a new family, so he’s finally able to leave his old one in peace.

But there’s no way he can know.

Their visits to the temple become more frequent, just the two of them, plus Bumi’s guards keeping a lookout. Their second time alone, Zaru asks the question that he’s been dreading.

“Dad, how come there’s lots of firebenders, and earthbenders, and waterbenders too, but there’s no other airbenders?”

Aang wishes he could keep Zaru’s burden light forever, but he can’t. The boy is too young to be told of such atrocities, too young to understand death at all.

“Azula told me the firebenders killed them a long time ago, and you’re the only one who got out,” Zaru adds before he has the opportunity to reply.

Aang shakes his head wearily. As much as Azula’s mental health has improved after leaving the Fire Nation, there are some things about her that they just can’t change. 

“Yes,” he says. “That’s what happened.”

“Why would they do that?” he asks innocently.

“Well, before you were born, the Fire Nation wanted to rule the whole world. They thought we would get in the way of that.” He can’t bring himself to clarify, to say that it was because of him. They thought he would get in the way of that.

“Why don’t we get revenge on them?”

That settles it. Zaru has been spending too much time around Azula.

“Forgiveness is an important part of who we are as airbenders, Zaru,” he says. “Air is the element of freedom. We can’t be free if we’re weighed down by all our grudges and thoughts of revenge.” Even as he speaks the words, he doesn’t know if he’ll ever find it in himself to forgive Ozai for the way he’s treated his family and everyone close to him, for the way he’s treated his own citizens, for the hate he’s spewed. “Besides,” he adds hastily. “The people who made the decision to attack the Air Nomads are long dead, too. It was almost a hundred years ago. There’s no one left to get revenge on, even if it was a good idea.”

They meditate in the empty temple courtyard, the cracked ruins stretching up to caress the clear blue sky above. The statue of a monk stares back at them, eyes kindly but unblinking. Zaru is quiet and focused for once, and it allows Aang to slip into a trance that he doesn’t remember entering.

The vision creeps into his awareness like a dream. A burning rock shoots through the atmosphere, leaving desolation and violence in its wake. Sozin’s Comet, he knows instinctively. An old man with a long white beard appears to him; he’s seen him before in little glimpses and flashes, but now, he’s clear as day. Roku, his predecessor. 

The Fire Nation harnessed the power of the comet to kill the air nomads, Roku tells him. Soon, it will return.

He knows this already. But why Roku wants to show him this after years of silence is something he doesn’t understand. Why are you telling me this? Aang asks, but the vision ends when Zaru nudges him back to reality.

“You fell asleep,” Zaru teases him.

Shaken, Aang forces out a lighthearted reply. “How do you know? You were supposed to have your eyes closed.”

He sends Zaru to bed early, and returns to the garden to meditate in hopes that Roku will visit him again. Nothing happens. His mind wanders, intent on piecing together the motive behind the vision. Sure, he’d been discussing the genocide with Zaru, but there must be more to it.

The comet will be returning soon. Every hundred years. Perhaps a warning, then? But the world is at peace — what could the Fire Nation possibly use it for?

Maybe Aang knows this already, too.

—

For a while, Ozai gives Lu Ten the space to grieve. Iroh still lives in the dungeons, but he’s as good as dead. Ozai could kill him and lose nothing, but part of him wants to gloat, to disgrace him. Because that’s all Iroh has ever been. A disgrace who has never once felt the shame that he deserves. 

The begrudging respect he’d once felt for his brother is gone. Now it’s time to test his nephew’s loyalty.

He starts by inviting Lu Ten to replace his father on the council. His input is bland; he follows the majority opinion and usually votes to uphold the status quo. It’s perfect for what he is now — a subordinate — but he will make a poor fire lord if so easily swayed. He still works his ministry job full time, as Ozai hopes that a taste of power will prepare him for his future role.

Lu Ten’s tight schedule doesn’t give them much time to get to know each other personally, so Ozai starts coming to the Ministry of Justice to lighten his workload and keep a closer eye on him. He observes that Lu Ten is too kind to his staff, taking their input seriously and meeting their demands. He’s lenient to criminals, easy on their sentencing and rare to order executions. Ozai doesn’t like it at all.

“In life, there is hierarchy,” he explains. “I have granted you great authority, and yet you refuse to use it. Are you afraid of wielding power?”

“No,” Lu Ten protests. Uncertainly, he continues, “It’s just that my father always treated his employees at the tea shop with respect, and they appreciated him for that. I wanted to follow his example. Honor his memory.”

“He’s gone, Nephew,” Ozai growls. “He’s gone because he’s a traitor. A traitor does not deserve honor. These people are below you, and you are below me. I cannot name you my successor until you understand that.”

“I do understand that,” he asserts.

“Then I want to see it.”

He knows he cannot win Lu Ten over with only this hard act. Both of his parents are gone, and he is still young. Part of him truly does want to bond with Lu Ten, to fill the gap in his own life that Aang left when he stole his family. Their first conversations unrelated to work are awkward and stilted, but they make progress towards a more amicable relationship. Ozai tells stories from his and Iroh’s childhoods, and Lu Ten talks about his escapades in Caldera with the girl he’s been dating.

It makes Ozai unexpectedly jealous that he has other people in his life. “This girl,” Ozai says, “is she appropriate for a man of your station?”

“Oh, she’s from the edge of the city, so no, she’s kind of middle class.” Lu Ten sets down his glass of whiskey. The Ministry of Justice is dark and empty at this hour, all the employees gone home. The two of them have been working late, and now that they’ve finished, Ozai is treating his nephew to a drink. “But I really like her, even if she’s not a noblewoman like I’m expected to marry. She’s kind, and smart, and… really beautiful. She has this laugh that…”

Ozai tunes it out. He realizes that he’s never caught himself thinking about anyone in the way that Lu Ten talks about this girl, not even Ursa. When he sleeps with his palace concubines, they’re faceless to him because the person he’s imagining beneath him is someone who’s never existed.

“She’s not worthy of you,” he interrupts.

“What?” Lu Ten slurs a little. “I’m so lucky to have her. If she’s not good enough, then no one is.”

“I am.”

Lu Ten stares, unable — or perhaps unwilling — to process what he means.

Ozai slams his drink down. Whiskey splashes onto the table. “We are the last two remaining members of the royal family. You are the closest thing to an equal that I have.” He laughs bitterly. “Did you think I was lying when I said I was all you needed?”

“No, I would never accuse you of lying—”

“Good. Then take off your clothes.”

“What?” His brow knits, his face is the picture of confusion and horror rolled into one. He’s always been such an expressive boy. “You mean to…? But—”

“You would defy a direct order from your fire lord?” Ozai snarls. “Are you a traitor like your father?”

His jaw tightens. “No,” he says after some consideration, but it is a firm answer, a solid answer that speaks of his conviction.

Moments later, Ozai is on top of him. That is the natural order of things. Lu Ten’s breathing is heavy, his back arched, his cries unrestrained. “I can make you so great,” he whispers against his nephew’s slick skin. 

Maybe one day, he can be happy with Lu Ten beneath him instead of some faceless concept of love. 

But until then, they have a lot of work to do.

A few months later, he visits Iroh in prison for the first time. The old man looks destitute, hair bedraggled, robe ripped and dirty, eyes dull. “So kind of you to visit, Brother,” he says, as if nothing has happened between them. Still, he doesn’t turn to face Ozai. “What brings you here?”

There’s something so satisfying about seeing Iroh behind bars. Compromise, he realizes, has never been fulfilling. When Iroh had abdicated, it hadn’t felt like this. When Ozai had defeated him in their Agni Kai, burnt and spent from fighting, it hadn’t felt like this.

But this? This is pure, unmistakable victory.

“It’s been a long time since we’ve spoken. I thought you’d like to be kept up to date on the world outside your cell, no?”

“I don’t care to hear your needlessly cruel schemes, Ozai.” 

If he can’t see Iroh rage and fume behind those bars because of his plans, that’s fine. He has other leverage. “I didn’t come here to talk about my plans. I’m here to talk about your son.”

The light returns to Iroh’s eyes, and it’s the light of anger. “And what of my son?” he asks. “You’ve been keeping him from me.”

“I told him you’re dead,” he says. “He has no need for you now that he’s under my tutelage.”

“You’re corrupting him,” Iroh hisses, barely audible.

“I’m surprised you didn’t raise him to be a traitor. It won’t be hard to shape him into the perfect crown prince. He’ll do anything I ask.” Ozai repeats it, drawing out the words. “Anything I ask.”

By now, he has Iroh’s full attention. The prisoner stares at him, gaze burning with fury, yet wavering with fear. He continues, “Would you have guessed that he squeals like a slut when we’re in bed together? He serves the Fire Nation well at the Ministry, but frankly, he does the most for his country when he’s on his hands and knees—”

It has the intended effect. Ozai dodges the wave of fire blasting out of the cell. “You monster!” Iroh screams. “How could you do such a thing?”

“No need to worry, Brother. He quite enjoys our time together,” he calls over his shoulder.

The bars rattle, and flame roars, but Ozai turns and walks away.

Life couldn’t be much better.

—

Life couldn’t be much better.

Ominous warnings from past selves and the constant question of what atrocities are occurring in the Fire Nation aside, Aang is finally living a life he’s happy with. His job is rewarding; he gets on well with his coworkers. Bumi is dependable leader, and a great sparring partner. Aang gets much better at earthbending during those years. They don’t butt heads nearly as much as he and Ozai had, and they have much more in common politically as well as personally.

Zuko finishes school, and Bumi gives him a position in the city government. Azula is still wrapping up her education, and her childhood friendship with Mila has blossomed into a romance. Zaru is quickly progressing through the levels of airbending, and takes his training seriously, even the spiritual parts that he had previously deemed boring. Their visits to the air temples grow more frequent, and in passing down his culture, Aang becomes more connected to it than ever. He learns how to visit the spirit world, access his past lives, and ask them for advice. They tell him all different things, but one message is clear: that his duty is to the world.

The problem is that he doesn’t know how to do his duty. He never has. That is why he’s been running from it his whole life.

But other than that, yes, things couldn’t be much better. Aang experiences a few more years of peace, but it’s all over a few days after the sun goes dark in the sky, and he finds a disheveled Iroh having tea with Bumi and Ursa in the castle.

“Avatar Aang,” Iroh addresses him. They’d been friends during Aang’s years at the palace, but Iroh’s tone is grave, without a hint of joy.

“Iroh,” Aang stammers, taken aback. “How have you been? What are you doing here?”

“Not great, I’m afraid. I bring bad news from the Fire Nation.”

Aang pulls up a chair cautiously, not wanting to hear anything that’s about to shatter his idyllic life. Iroh sips deeply from his steaming cup, again, without joy. Ursa’s face is drawn, and her tea sits neglected on the table. Even Bumi is serious.

“Ozai has gone mad with power,” Iroh says. “With the Earth Kingdom refusing to take in refugees, he has been keeping non-firebenders in camps and using their labor-power. I am ashamed to admit that the latter part was my idea, but it is preferable to what he initially planned to do with them.”

“When I found that he had executed a group of prisoners for rebelling, I challenged him to an Agni Kai, and as you may have guessed, I lost.” The traces of a smile cross from his features, but it’s a bitter smile, a sneer. “I spent a long time in the dungeons. Ozai would visit me, and tell me horrible things. Horrible things he would do to the prisoners, and horrible things he would do to my son.” He shuts his eyes and grits his teeth. “He gave away information that he should’ve kept secret just because he wanted to spite me.”

“A few days ago, there was an eclipse. Perhaps you noticed that your firebending was blocked. I used the opportunity to escape. King Bumi and I made acquaintance a long time ago, when we were much younger men, and when he told me your family was here, this was where I knew I had to come. I am lucky to have made it out of the Fire Nation alive. Others are not so fortunate.”

Iroh sips his drink again. This whole time, Aang’s stomach has been tying itself into knots, and he thinks he’s going to be sick.

“What did Ozai tell you about?” Ursa asks.

“Many things,” Iroh says, “but one of utmost importance. I assume you know that Sozin’s Comet will be returning soon.”

Aang’s world spins, and he reaches out to grab the table before he hits the ground. “Are you all right, honey?” Ursa asks him, and he nods uneasily. Both of them know it’s not true.

“He tells me that the prisoners are no longer useful. Some are dying from overwork, and others have been staging riots that are too costly to put down. As firebending is strongest when the comet comes, he plans to use its power to wipe out the prison camps entirely.”

The table isn’t enough to hold him. Aang bends over and retches onto the floor, but he feels power coursing through him — and anger. Deep, burning rage. But it’s not directed at Ozai. No, Aang is the one who enabled this. Once again, he has failed as an avatar. He has failed as an airbender. He has failed as a person, and maybe most importantly, he has failed as a friend.

But why lie to himself? He was never Ozai’s friend, and he can never be Ozai’s friend. Distantly, he feels wind swirling around him and the floor shifting beneath him and fire crackling in his palms and Ursa yelling at him, Ursa screaming his name, Ursa bringing him back to reality.

“What have I done?” he sobs, letting himself collapse into Ursa’s arms. Her embrace always makes him forget what’s wrong with the world, but not this time. He can’t block it out any longer. This is genocide, and he doesn’t know why he didn’t realize it sooner. He just supposed a nation could ever turn on its own people like that.

But it’s what Ozai has been saying all along. That the prisoners aren’t Fire Nation.

“Aang,” Bumi says. “This is not your fault alone.”

“And you don’t have to fix it alone, either,” Ursa adds. “We’re with you.”

“There is still time,” Iroh says. “We all played a part in bringing Ozai to power, and now we must all play a part in bringing him down.”

“I can’t do it,” he whines, like a child running from responsibility, like a young man disappearing into the world to ignore his duty to it. “Every time I try, something goes wrong.”

“Do you trust us?” Ursa asks, and this is what makes all the difference. Yes, he trusts her more than he’d trusted Ozai when they’d taken Ba Sing Se, he trusts her more than he has ever trusted anyone else.

“Of course,” he says.

“Then we’ll set things right.”

—

“What’s wrong, Uncle? You’ve had that same frown for the last few days. Can I do anything different tonight to cheer you up?”

“They’ve still not been able to put down the riot at the Baroshi prison camp,” Ozai lies. He slams the bedroom door and starts stripping off his robes. “It’s out of hand. Something must be done about it.”

The truth is that he’s been in a foul mood ever since he found Iroh’s cell empty with the bars bent and the guards knocked unconscious on the day of the eclipse. A dangerous political opponent in possession of classified information is running around a free man, and they have no clue where he is.

And all because Ozai had wanted to gloat.

But he can’t tell his nephew about that. “The camps have outlived their usefulness,” Lu Ten remarks. “I say we start throwing the prisoners in the ocean if they show any signs of disobedience. They can swim to the Dirt Kingdom if they really want.”

He laughs, and Ozai smirks. Lu Ten has changed so much in the last few years, shaping up to be a strong leader who deals with his subordinates firmly, but always bows down to Ozai’s leadership. In fact, things are looking so good that Ozai has stopped searching for his family. Undoubtedly, Aang has corrupted his children by now.

He dreads the day that Lu Ten will have to produce an heir of his own, however, because it means that their little trysts will have to end.

“I like how you think. But I’m afraid your ideas are not quite up to par with mine yet,” Ozai says, and he tells him about his plan for Sozin’s Comet.

“So efficient,” Lu Ten says, eyes wide. “But what about all the tainted firebenders? They might stand in the way.”

“I’ll let you decide what to do with them.”

Lu Ten reacts the same way he does on those rare occasions when Ozai offers to orally pleasure him: “Really? What an honor. I would love that.” 

And in turn, Ozai loves having someone around willing to step up to responsibility. Iroh and Aang can’t compare.

“Yes,” he says, and he slips into bed next to Lu Ten, pulling him in close. The boy has been obediently waiting for him to get back from his meeting with the Minister of Agriculture, and Ozai knows to reward him for his good behavior. The day has worn his patience thin, and both of them would like nothing more than a quick round of rough sex to release their frustrations.

It’s the same room and the same bed where he and Ursa had consummated their marriage, had slept next to each other for years, and, he can only assume, the same bed where she had forsaken him for Aang. Ozai had never let any of that bother him when he and Lu Ten had started using it, but when his nephew gasps out a heated “I love you” in the middle of their union, it reminds him of Ursa. He doesn’t say the words back, he never has, not even for her. He kisses Lu Ten, hard, and hopes he will take it as a sign of affirmation. 

Not long ago, he’d thought he could be happy with Lu Ten beneath him, but it’s not true. And not long ago, he’d thought that imprisoning anyone without pure blood could make his whole country happy. But it’s not true. 

Now, he can only be happy when every last one of his enemies is dead.

—

Iroh stays with them in the castle during time leading up to the comet. The kids had been young when they’d last seen him, but they’re glad to be reunited, and they spend time bonding over firebending, cooking, and pai sho. Iroh gives them advice where and Aang and Ursa’s own wisdom has fallen short, and they’re grateful for his help.

Still, there are moments when he withdraws, troubled. “My son is still in the Fire Nation,” he reveals late one night, just him and Aang. “My brother is grooming him to be the next heir.”

Had it been selfish, Aang thinks, to forget about Iroh’s family when he’d fled? But of course the consequences would’ve fallen onto someone else. Had they taken Iroh and Lu Ten with them to the Earth Kingdom as well, Ozai simply would have remarried and victimized his new family.

“I’m so sorry,” he says quietly. “We’ll help him when we go back to stop Ozai.”

Iroh stares pensively into the dancing flames in the fireplace. “I’m afraid he may be a different person now.”

“Whatever Ozai told you, maybe he was lying, or exaggerating. Remember how he’d always try to rile you up, but it never worked?”

After voicing this point, he wonders what, exactly, Ozai could’ve said that would make Iroh this upset. “I can only hope so,” Iroh says, but Aang knows better than to push or pry. Kona may be long dead, but his effects have never truly gone.

The next day, they go over their plan. Bumi offers to send troops and provide the transportation. Aang thinks it’s a dangerous move — if they fail, the Fire Nation and the Earth Kingdom may go back to war — but it’s a risk they have to take.

They turn to their fellow refugees as well, many of whom are willing to help take back their country. They’ll have to team up with the prisoners to liberate the camps, hopefully before the comet’s power reaches its peak. Azula, Zuko, and Zaru, for whom bending is more than just a hobby, are eager to see combat. Aang doesn’t want to put them in danger, but he remembers being their age and joining the rebellion, wanting to fight for what he believed in. For peace. It’s a difficult decision, but he accepts their help.

Next is the problem of locating Ozai and Lu Ten. Both of them will be out in the field, Iroh assures him. Ozai wouldn’t miss the chance to prove himself a strong, courageous leader. Most likely, he’ll be starting his route in Baroshi, the closest camp to Caldera, and also the one that’s had the most upheavals. Lu Ten may be with him, but there’s no guarantee.

Aang’s other problem is that he can’t control the avatar state. He accesses his past lives again, and listens to what they have to tell him. They instruct him to open his chakras, and fortunately, Iroh is able to guide him through the process.

They don’t get very far. The first emotion blocking Aang is his guilt over what he’s already stood by and let happen. All the times he’s disappeared and run from duty, and now, standing at the precipice of another atrocity, those feelings are stronger than ever.

“Your son tells me that forgiveness is an important part of who you are as airbenders,” Iroh says. They’re visiting the temple, meditating in the courtyard where Aang had experienced his first vision of Roku. “There is no going back, no changing the past. The only direction is forward. So why can you not forgive yourself for your mistakes?”

He’s right. Aang is used to directing any consideration of forgiveness outward. When he had given Zaru that talk, he had thought of Ozai as the person who would need forgiveness — if he could bear to give it to him at all. Now he realizes it’s just as important — no, maybe more important — to forgive himself too.

This revelation produces no immediate change, and he needs affirmation from his family, but a few days later, they’re able to move on to other chakras. Iroh tells him of the illusion of separation, the idea that everyone and everything is connected, that the divisions between people, nations, and even the elements themselves are meaningless. “You’d better tell Ozai that, after all this is over,” Aang jokes.

Iroh’s expression is stony. “I may not be able to,” he says. “You may have to kill him. Surely, you are prepared to do that?”

“I don’t want to,” he admits. His bending is strong, and he can always fall back on sucking the breath from the lungs of his enemies, but it’s too deadly. So easy to take it too far, just as he had on the night when the assassin had threatened to hurt Zaru. “I don’t know what I’ll do, but I don’t want to do that. Even with everything he’s done, I never want to take a life again.”

“Very well. As long as he is off the throne and in a place where he can do no further harm, I will trust your judgement.”

They haven’t spoken about who will succeed Ozai once he’s been overthrown, but maybe that’s a question for another time. “The final chakra,” Aang says.

“Yes, the thought chakra,” Iroh says. “Once you unlock this chakra, you will be able to enter the avatar state at will. It deals with pure cosmic energy, and it is blocked by earthly attachment.”

“Earthly attachment?” he echoes. “I have a family — a whole life here! I’m supposed to give all that up for some cosmic energy? I’m not even sure what cosmic energy is.”

“That is not a choice I can make for you. But if you want to stop my brother and become a fully realized avatar, this is the best option.” Iroh turns his gaze towards the stars. “Life is precious, and the avatar is mortal so that he can learn this. In this way, you can never truly be apart from the world.”

Aang thinks about the life he’s built for himself. The pride on Azula’s face when she beats him in a spar, the rare softness in her voice when she talks about Mila. Zuko, finishing a day’s hard work at his new job and eager to tell him about the changes he wants to bring to the city. Ursa’s smile, every time she laughs at one of his jokes, crawling into bed with her and falling asleep in her arms each night. When Zaru masters another level of airbending and asks when he’ll get his tattoos. So much he still has to teach him, so much he still has to pass down. So much of life left to live. So many people to live for.

He holds all those moments in his mind, savoring them.

And he lets go.

—

“This is yours,” Ozai says. The piece belonging to the crown prince has been sitting unused for years, but now he holds it out to Lu Ten. If Iroh returns today, Ozai wants Lu Ten to know exactly who got him where he is. Exactly to whom he should be loyal. “Wear it. It’s time I accepted that my family is never coming back. You are the crown prince now.”

“It’s an honor,” Lu Ten says, head bowed. Ozai slides the crown over his topknot.

“You know what’s expected of you,” Ozai says, and allows himself to stroke Lu Ten’s hair — only once. He will never say out loud that he has come to care for his nephew — just not in the way his nephew cares for him. “Make me proud. Make our nation proud.”

“Of course, Uncle.” He pauses. “Do you feel the power in the air? It’s like it’s… alive.”

“Yes. The comet will be here soon.” Yes, oh yes, he feels it thrumming through him, growing stronger by the minute, and he cannot wait to unleash his full potential. “I’ll see you once it’s over. We will celebrate tonight.”

Lu Ten looks like he wants to say something more, but Ozai is gone before he gets the chance, bursting through the palace doors and into the harsh red light of Sozin’s Comet. With his military flanking him, he steps into the tank at the head of the convoy, and they roll out on their way to Baroshi.

At the edge of the camp, they encounter trouble. The screaming and roar of flame tells him the attack has started, but something plows into the tank. It teeters precariously on its side for a moment before slamming back down onto both treads. 

“What’s happening outside?” Ozai growls, and shoves the general out of the way of the vision port.

“Earthbenders, sir,” the general reports. “They’re not supposed to be here!”

Ozai crawls out of the hatch. “Where did they come from?” he barks at the soldier beside him. Baroshi is a non-bending camp; all the earthbenders are off the coast in metal boats. He never thought he’d have to deal with them again, but here he is dodging rocks and lighting up dirt-lovers almost like it’s back during the war. 

The soldier gives him a bewildered look, and in his moment of distraction, a spire shoots up from the ground and impales him through the neck. Ozai directs a bolt of lightning at his attacker, and she falls the ground, corpse sizzling. The battle is so chaotic that he doesn’t even have the time to relish how good the heightened power of the comet makes him feel.

The gates of the camp are still far, mostly obscured by the wash of flame and the haze of dirt hanging in the air. The remaining tanks trundle on, but they’re falling fast, crushed, overturned, or sent flying.

“Where did they come from?” he asks again, mostly to himself. The Earth Kingdom wouldn’t even take in the deportees when Ozai had wanted them to; they’re certainly not intervening now. 

But he doesn’t have to ask a third time. The battle clears just long enough for him to spot, unmistakably, the avatar, holding off the Fire Nation army at the gates.

“Cover me,” he demands of the nearest general, and she signals her troops. He and his human shields push their way through the fighting, and about half of his soldiers have dropped by the time they reach the gates. On the contrary, many more of the earthbenders have been torched alive — the power of his firebending is almost out of control. Ozai finds himself underestimating his own strength many times, and he quite likes it.

“Let me through,” he demands, and Aang locks eyes with him. “I’ll take him alone.”

The general gives him an uncertain glance as a wounded soldier collapses to the ground beside her. Aang motions to the earthbenders surrounding him to stop fighting, and he halts as well.

“Fire Lord Ozai,” he says, his voice dripping with anger, “you bring shame to this entire world.”

“I bring honor to my people,” he declares, “and glory to my nation.” He knows Aang can easily suck the breath from his lungs, but the comet might equalize their power. If he can avoid triggering the avatar state, it’s a battle he can win. 

“Let these prisoners go free and I’ll spare you.”

“You’re in no position to bargain, Avatar.” Twin flames spiral up from his palms and into the blood-red heavens above. “This day is mine, and no one will stand in my way.”

—

Aang bends away the ground beneath Ozai, but the fire lord is quick, luring him away from the gates so the rest of his army can storm the camp. In the space between Ozai’s attacks, Aang creates a wall around the camp in hopes of slowing their progress, but their metal tanks batter the layer of rock until it collapses, and some of the more skillful firebenders simply jetpack their way over.

Soon, Aang is the only one left, and he can’t hold off Ozai, the army, and protect the camp at the same time. He can only hope that his earthbenders have already evacuated the prisoners. Ozai’s attacks are outrageously out of control, so strong that he can barely see through the wash of flame and the smoke stinging at his eyes. Ozai hides within his own fire and achieves range unlike anything Aang’s seen before, making him hard to hit.

He cannot afford to lose focus, but he remembers their spar at the Northern Air Temple thirty years ago.

Who knew it would end like this?

Aang blows fire back at the shadowy, elusive figure in the flame, and the haze clears long enough for him to see Ozai, dripping in sweat and with a murderous light in his eyes, charging up lightning. In turn, Aang generates lightning of his own, and the charges collide in the middle, hissing and jumping and flinging them both backward. 

As he struggles into a standing position, fire comes at him from behind, and he deflects it just in time. The army has returned to Ozai’s aid, he thinks, but a someone hits the Fire Nation general over the head with a section of metal piping, and he gets a glimpse of a grimy teenager in rags disappearing into the red-orange haze. A prisoner.

The distraction costs him dearly. Flame scorches his back, and he’s not fast enough to avoid the worst of the damage. With an agonized cry, he sprawls onto the burning stone, rolling and trying to bend away the fire that has taken hold of his body. The screams of pain, the crackling of flame, the barked orders, the crashing of tanks over hard dirt all fade in and out of his consciousness as he tries to crawl away from the figure sauntering towards him.

Only one sound is clear: a voice. It asks, “Any last words, Avatar?”

Through haze of pain and flame, a short, wheezing laugh escapes him. “I feel more love for you right now than you have felt for anyone in your whole life,” Aang says.

“Love,” Ozai sneers. “You speak of love at a time like this?”

Aang can barely stay conscious, let alone focused. “People have been trying to show you love all your life, and you have done nothing but turn them away. And for what? A facade of strength? The lie that you’ll be happy once you’ve killed everyone you deem unworthy of life? Hatred cannot make you happy, Ozai. But love can.”

Aang staggers to his feet. His talk had disarmed Ozai, but once they’re facing each other again, the fire lord raises his fists and prepares to attack.

Aang shuts his eyes, and lets go. Power flows through him, but it isn’t the same power of the comet, dangerous and out of control and destructive. He is calm, in control, and he knows what he has to do. Ozai’s eyes go wide, and he unleashes a flurry of messy attacks. Aang blocks them effortlessly, and Ozai turns tail and runs, calling desperately for backup.

A spire rises from the earth, clamping Ozai’s wrist to the ground. As he panics and squirms, Aang bends more restraints to secure him to the ground. “I will do what I must to protect this world,” he says in the voices of all the avatars past. The elements spiral around him in a tornado as he prepares to strike directly to Ozai’s heart. “Submit now, or prepare to die!”

Ozai cannot form words, and all Aang sees is a man who is to be pitied. It’s not a pathetic, undignified display when he desperately squirms in the dirt and begs for his life. He’s just a person. A human like any other, no better or worse than any prisoner at the camp.

As he exits the avatar state, Aang drops to his knees and cradles Ozai’s head in his arms. Then, very slowly, he bends the breath from his lungs. Ozai’s thrashing grows weaker until there is only the steady rise and fall of his chest.

The haze is clearing, lifting like the blight of Ozai’s reign over the Fire Nation. The haggard teenager who had vanished into it earlier reemerges, the pipe lying in the dirt by her bare feet. She observes him warily for a moment before speaking. “You’re the avatar?” she asks. “Where were you when this all started?”

“Yes, I am the avatar,” he says, and he finally feels comfortable saying so, even if people hate him for it. “It doesn’t matter where I was. I’m here now, and I’m going to make things right.”

—

Ozai awakens behind bars. Lu Ten, on the other side, glances at him, then looks away quickly. 

“Where am I?” Ozai asks, voice hoarse. “What is the meaning of this?”

“You lied to me,” he forces out through clenched teeth. “All this time, I believed my father was dead.” Tears form in his eyes, and his fists are balled together in his lap. Ozai notices that he’s wearing his robes, but not his crown.

“Now, now, Lu,” Ozai says. He still doesn’t know what he’s doing here, how Lu Ten found out that his father was alive, or the last thing that happened. But that doesn’t stop him from trying to weasel his way out. “He was a traitor — as good as dead. I wouldn’t call it a lie. And I know you aren’t like him. Now prove it to me — get me out of this cell.”

“You won’t fool me with that again,” Lu Ten snaps. “All those things I let you do to me… I let you do them because I thought it was your right as fire lord. But you’re just a man — a disgusting, evil man who abused his power. Agni knows what else you’ve been lying about.” He turns on his heel and leaves. “Don’t expect me to visit you.”

“Come back here!” Ozai screams, and the bars don’t even give him the satisfaction of rattling. “After everything I did for you, this is how you repay me?”

Lu Ten walks away, leaving Ozai seething and sulking in dim, dirty space.

Iroh is the next to visit him. He even brings a small peace offering — finally remembering that Ozai doesn’t care for tea, he gives a pastry. “I don’t know if I can forgive you, but if you are willing to make an effort to get along, I will try,” he says.

Ozai bites back a snarky comment. There’s not much to do in the dungeon except think, and now that the events of the comet have come back to him, what Aang had said during their battle is foremost in his mind. His pride refuses to let him accept it, but he doesn’t outright reject it, either.

“I will have to consider it,” he says. “What’s going on outside?” 

“Those held in the camps will receive reparations, and we will reopen relations with other countries,” Iroh replies. “I will be fire lord until Lu Ten recovers from what you’ve done to him. He’s going to Omashu with Aang and Ursa in hopes of overcoming the attitudes he learned from you. But for the nation to recover? It will take even longer.”

“Very well,” Ozai says. Hesitantly, he bows his head. “Thank you for the gift.”

“You know, Brother, in some other cultures, there is a concept called the illusion of separation,” Iroh continues. “It teaches us that we are not above the world, but rather part of it. All things are connected. The divisions between the nations — even the elements themselves — are meaningless.”

He raises an eyebrow skeptically. “Why are you telling me this?”

“Avatar Aang asked me to.” He gets to his feet. “Think about it, Brother.”

Ursa comes to see him next. There’s not much to say. She’s found someone else who makes her happier than he ever has, and he has slipped so low that there’s nothing between them.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m sorry I didn’t treat you the way you deserved.”

“You’re only sorry because you drove me into another man’s arms,” she says, and the truth of it stings him.

So selfish. He’s been so selfish.

She sends in Zuko and Azula to see him. They’ve grown up so much that he doesn’t recognize them. He’s not sure how to approach a conversation with his estranged children, but when he asks them questions, all they talk about in their stilted responses is the life they’ve built without him in Omashu.

He tries to reach out to them, to touch them through the bars because they don’t even seem real to him, but they decline. “No thanks, Ozai,” Azula says. “We’ve heard all about the naughty things you did with our cousin. It would be rather unwise of us to initiate any sort of physical contact with someone such as yourself.”

“Mother and Uncle Aang have done more for us than you ever could,” Zuko adds. “You missed your chance to be our father.”

And he knows. He knows that Aang was right. All these people had tried to love them, and he has driven them away. They have outgrown him. 

He hadn’t told them how much he cares for them, and now it’s too late.

EPILOGUE

“Why did you spare me? This isn’t merciful. Death would have been merciful.” Ozai’s hands clench around the prison bars, and he doesn’t even look sad. Just miserable. The shell of a once-proud man.

Aang smiles sadly. He has been avoiding this meeting. But before he can go back to his life with his family, he has to get closure. He has to make things right with Ozai. He has to at least try.

“I’ve haven’t stayed true to what I believe in over the years,” Aang says. “And that was the problem. I should’ve seen the truth behind all of your promises.” 

All those warning signs of the atrocity he’d wanted so badly to commit. He’d wanted so badly to prove his strength, not knowing that the strongest people are born of love, not hate. Aang had loved the Air Nomads; he is of the world, and he loves all its people.

“And I should’ve seen the truth behind yours,” Ozai counters. And he’s right, Aang has made mistakes in his life. He’d shattered the flimsy trust between them when he’d decided to become the very thing he had hated most: a traitor.

But that is the past. There is only forward.

“In spite of everything,” Aang says, his vision blurring as he tears up. “In spite of everything, I know there’s something inside you worth saving. And if you can forgive me too, maybe, now that it’s all over… could we finally be friends?”

Ozai’s hands go slack around the bar. “Yes,” he chokes out. “I’d like that very much.”

-FIN-


End file.
